Dive Brief:
- A new study has found that healthcare workers had one of the highest injury rates of any industry in the U.S. in 2011, which cost the industry $13.1 billion and 2 million lost workdays.
- Only workers in outdoor professions such as logging and fishing had higher rates of on-the-job injuries.
- Researchers found that 15.2 million healthcare workers were injured in 2011, with sprains and strains the most common injury types.
Dive Insight:
It isn't discussed much at tradeshows or industry roundtables, but healthcare workers -- especially those with direct patient care responsibilities -- get injured frequently in the course of their work. It's worth noting, also, that nurses are at particular risk, with slips, trips and falls, violence and chemical exposure proving far more common than many of us would suspect. Given both the financial and human costs of these injuries, it's clearly time to pay more attention to how and where these injuries happen, and create a culture which makes workers feel safe.