Prevalence and Risk Factors of Occupational Injuries among Emergency Health Service Providers

Abstract

Introduction: There are a limited number of studies focused on the occupational health of Emergency medical health services providers in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, studies conducted in Saudi Arabia focused on either subgroup of health workers such as nurses, or assessed certain types of occupational injuries. Thus, we aim to assess comprehensively the prevalence and determinants of work-related injuries among all health workers.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study aimed to assess the prevalence and determinants of work-related injuries among health workers in governmental hospitals in Najran. Emergency medical health services providers who work in governmental hospitals located in Najran. The number of participants required to estimate the prevalence of occupational injuries is calculated to be 282 health service providers. A structured online questionnaire was sent to emergency staff in order to collect data about study variables. The validated version of a questionnaire was obtained with Cronbach’s alpha >0.80 for occupational hazards assessment.

Results: The total number of recruited Emergency medical health services providers in this study was 282, and all the respondents were males. Half of all Emergency medical health services providers were distributed equally in medical and surgical wards as their current working department. About 98% of the Emergency medical health services providers reported the availability of protocol and safety guidelines for reporting work injuries in their hospital. About 93% of Emergency medical health services providers know about work-safe devices and 88% always use work-safe devices. This study reported a lifetime occurrence of occupational injuries among Emergency medical health services providers to be 37.6%. The most common reason for this delay in reporting the injury was that work had not been yet used in a patient, followed by patients who had no infectious disease of concern and were busy at that time in 15% and 11.7%, respectively.

Conclusions:  The occurrence of occupational injuries could not be predicted by Emergency medical health services providers’ characteristics such as years of experience, educational level, hours of work, and the number of patients on duty. Further qualitative research is recommended to explore the attitudes and opinions of Emergency medical health services providers regarding the prevention of work injuries injury.