All across the world healthcare professionals and organizations are dealing with the same issue, nursing workplace hazards and the effects it has on nurses and healthcare. Nursing Hazards have been a significant topic of discussion for many health professionals and organizations. Nurses are continuously reporting the issue of injury and illness. The duties that nurses are tasked with put them at an everyday risk of different types of hazards. The safety of employees and health organizations depends on nursing hazards being identified and managed with knowledge, skill, and assessment. It is the fundamental right of health professionals to feel safe at work and to feel safe hazards must be identified and managed. Nurses face exposure to workplace hazards such as blood pathogens and other body fluids, chemicals in the form of solid, liquid or gas, needle sticks, latex allergy, spills, equipment malfunction, the physical strain of the body, and workload. These hazards are under the broad category of biological, chemical, physical, safety, and ergonomic and work organization hazards. The following paper is going to look at workplace hazards and the effects it has on nursing staff. It will also look at how this issue that is plaguing not only the United States but the world can be managed or resolved.
The risk of infectious diseases for nurses is not just in different sections of hospitals but in other workplace settings that nurses also work, such as prisons, nursing homes, institutions and outpatient facilities. Infectious diseases such as (HIV, HCV, and HBV) due to needle-stick injuries are risks to the health and life of nurses. Alavi (2014) found that “600000 to 800000 needle stick injuries occur each year in all healthcare settings. Injections (21%), suturing (17%), and drawing blood (16%) are the main causes of exposures (11). Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), tuberculosis, and methicillin resistant staphylococcus infection are other infectious diseases that can afflict nurses”. HBV is one of the most significant exposures for healthcare professionals, especially traveling nurses due to injection diseases while they are on assignment. Nurses must take responsibility to make sure they are immune with direct patient care responsibilities.
Chemical hazards are also another source of hazard nurses face in the workplace. Materials used for patient treatment and maintaining a proper environment, for example, disinfectants and sterility products such as ethylene oxide, glutaraldehyde, hazardous drugs used for chemotherapy, and latex exposure are among some of the chemical substances that are hazardous to nurses. Nurses are exposed to these different kinds and mixtures of chemicals and hazardous agents each year in their clinical practice.
Similarly, nurses also face hazards such as workplace violence and exposure to hazards such as radiation. Exposure to radiation is associated with mutations and teratogenic properties which can cause stillbirth, miscarriages and other reproductive issues as well as different types of cancers. Nurses, especially those in the emergency department face exposure and are also prone to workplace violence. “According to a 2011 study by the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA), the 53.4% of nurses reported experiencing verbal abuse and more than one in 10 (12.9%) reported experiencing physical violence (13)” (Alavi, 2014). Because patient’s mental and physical health is always changing nurses are still facing the most injuries than most occupations. The rate of injuries that nurses encounter is the second highest just behind construction workers. Medication, confusion, and stress are all factors that may contribute to a patient’s behavior that puts a nurse in a hostile work environment. And also the subtle changes in patients during ambulation or transfers because of their unpredictability can lead to musculoskeletal injuries acquired by nurses after trying to stop a patient from getting injured.
Which leads me to the safety hazards nurses face on a daily basis, risks such as slips, trips, and falls. Work-related slips, trips, and fall incidents are serious hazards that can result in disabling injuries that could affect a nurse’s ability to do their job and also result in losing the ability to work, lost work time, compensation claims, and the reduced ability to care for patients. Most slips, trips, and falls are associated with hazards that could be easily minimized, hazards such as bodily fluids, water, grease, and gel that has spilled on the floor. Nursing home workers are the ones who experience more slip, trip, and fall-related injury claims than any other industry in the workforce. Bell et al. (2013) found that “Slips, trips, and falls account for the second largest proportion of lost-workday nonfatal injuries (26%) in the nursing care facilities industry subsector (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011b). The incidence rate for nursing care facilities surpasses that for all industries for same-level and total slips, trips, and falls—19.5 versus 26.4 per 10,000 workers, respectively. Due to the large number of nursing care facility workers, approximately 1.7 million (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011a), and a high incidence, 9,060 lost-workday slip, trip, and fall-related injuries occurred in this industry in 2010 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011c)”.
Nurses are always on their feet for hours at a time, which means a physical strain on the body which is a significant risk to nurses. Nurses have to lift and transfer patients on a daily basis, and that is risky. Lifting and moving is the most common cause of back injury among healthcare professionals. In 2005, Ramsay found that with patient movement and handling “38% of all nurses are affected by back injuries, nearly all of these injuries (98%) are due to nurses lifting and moving patients manually (Meier, 2001). There were other work-related musculoskeletal disorders found “studies of upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders in nurses have reported prevalence rates of shoulder problems in 43-53% of nurses (Lagerström et al., 1995) and neck injuries between 31-48% (Ando et al., 2000)” (p. 3).
Additionally nurses that work with patients that are terminally and chronically ill, and nurses that work in intensive care units, burn unit, emergency room, or operating rooms are at risk for work-related hazards. Work-related factors that contribute to stress could include life-threatening situations or illnesses, injuries, workload, lack of respect, support or teamwork, short staffing, scheduling or the passing of a patient. In many hospitals, nurses might feel isolated, angry, fatigue and feel like they have no power to act on a situation due to the loss of personal identity created by those in a higher level of control. When these signs of stress are not seen and dealt with, it might cause a burnout. Stress-related symptoms can lead to a downward spiral with drugs, alcohol, and the use of cigarettes. The characteristics and behavior of the nurse could change and be affected negatively, which can lead to average job performance, fatigue and an increase in not being present in the job. In 2014, Alavi found in a study that “43.4% of nurses reported excessive fatigue (6). Raftopoulos et al. also reported that 91.9% of Cypriot nurses had fatigue (10)” (p. 1).
Nurses are always facing many dangers in the healthcare field, and these risks must be addressed for the nursing workforce to thrive. The first step to managing this problem is to address the issue of these hazards. If the issue can be resolved, then the medical field can start thinking about the strategizing, categorizing and coming up with methods such as information, training, and instruction on how to handle such critical issues. The effectiveness of various nursing functions should be considered when developing a prevention program. Protocols can be created which takes into account the evaluation and sharing of specific tasks to specific nurses and identifying those that need assistance and the type of aid that is required. Providing training and orientation concerning physical hazards such as lifting techniques when people are hired or reassigned would be a useful way to prevent hazards. The management of hazards regarding workload could include having a regularly scheduled staff meeting with the development of programs for managing stress and also coping mechanisms. An application for employees who need assistance, the ability to be flexible in the development and participation of work schedules, receiving the appropriate education and training sessions, and creating an organized and productive work environment to the level that is of high standards. Recognizing and taking action against complaints made that are hazardous, security in dangerous areas, and the use of therapy or support groups to help employees deal with professional problems.
Nurses are subject to workplace hazards through their interaction with patient’s, the environment and the demands of the job. The job demands of nurses put them in risky and hazardous situations on a daily basis. The safety of employees and health organizations depends on nursing hazards being identified and managed with knowledge, skill, and assessment. It is the primary right of health professionals to feel safe at work and to feel safe hazards must be identified and managed. If nursing hazards are identified and managed, then that improves the nurse supervisor and the nurse’s ability to know what to expect. When these risks are identified and controlled in the nursing workplace, then we can improve job satisfaction and reduce job resignation. The management of these hazards could also suggest the reduction in needle sticks, the increased use of personal protective equipment, better precautions, being efficient and protecting yourself from harm. Which as a result would show that nurses that are trained better would be better at protecting themselves from job-related risks and would show higher job satisfaction levels, less stress, and reduced job resignation. Great organizations make sure that they learn from their mistakes and ensure that their employees are safe, rather than just blame their employees.