ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Work-related injury among direct care occupations in British Columbia, Canada

Hasanat Alamgir¹, Yuri Cvitkovich², Shicheng Yu³, Annalee Yassi⁴

¹ Statistics and Evaluation Department, Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare, Vancouver, BC, Canada
² College of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
³ Statistics and Evaluation Department, Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare, Vancouver, BC, Canada
⁴ Department of Healthcare and Epidemiology, and Department of Medicine, and Head, Division of Occupational Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Annalee Yassi, Founding Executive Director, Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare (OHSAH), 301-1195 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC, V6H 3X5; annaleeY{at}aol.com

Objectives: To examine how injury rates and injury types differ across direct care occupations in relation to the healthcare settings in British Columbia, Canada.

Methods: Data were derived from a standardised operational database in three BC health regions. Injury rates were defined as the number of injuries per 100 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions. Poisson regression, with Generalised Estimating Equations, was used to determine injury risks associated with direct care occupations (registered nurses [RNs], licensed practical nurses [LPNs) and care aides [CAs]) by healthcare setting (acute care, nursing homes and community care).

Results: CAs had higher injury rates in every setting, with the highest rate in nursing homes (37.0 injuries per 100 FTE). LPNs had higher injury rates (30.0) within acute care than within nursing homes. Few LPNs worked in community care. For RNs, the highest injury rates (21.9) occurred in acute care, but their highest (13.0) musculoskeletal injury (MSI) rate occurred in nursing homes. MSIs comprised the largest proportion of total injuries in all occupations. In both acute care and nursing homes, CAs had twice the MSI risk of RNs. Across all settings, puncture injuries were more predominant for RNs (21.3% of their total injuries) compared with LPNs (14.4%) and CAs (3.7%). Skin, eye and respiratory irritation injuries comprised a larger proportion of total injuries for RNs (11.1%) than for LPNs (7.2%) and CAs (5.1%).

Conclusions: Direct care occupations have different risks of occupational injuries based on the particular tasks and roles they fulfil within each healthcare setting. CAs are the most vulnerable for sustaining MSIs since their job mostly entails transferring and repositioning tasks during patient/resident/client care. Strategies should focus on prevention of MSIs for all occupations as well as target puncture and irritation injuries for RNs and LPNs.

Abbreviations: BC, British Columbia; CA, care aide; FTE, full-time equivalent; LPN, licensed practical nurse; MSI, musculoskeletal injury; OLAP, On-line Analytical Processing; OSAH, The Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare; RN, registered nurse; RR, relative risk; WHITE^TM, Workplace Health Indicator Tracking and Evaluation; WorkSafeBC, Workers’ Compensation Board of British Columbia

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Palmer, K. (2007). Work in brief. Occup. Environ. Med. 64: 717-717 [Full Text]