Healthcare workers injuries

Healthcare system is one of the most important fields in American and it is necessary to keep it on toes whenever. Healthcare workers are disguised to be among the lucky citizens holding the lucky job opportunities in America and all over the world. Even though we view them as the lucky group of people, they face certain challenges too among them being injuries at work, by either fellow workers or the activities they engage in on the daily routines of their job description. Injuries suffered by healthcare workers are among the hazard experienced in the present world of healthcare system. I chose this hazard based of the need to reduce these types of injuries to keep the healthcare workers at work because they do the job of saving the humanity by attending to them at various healthcare facilities. Among the common injuries experienced are; sprains and strains, infections, and physical violence. The health workers however, can insure themselves against any form of injuries they may encounter during their operations. Healthcare workers have the capacity to sue and ask for compensation following any form of injury at work. CITATION Com l 1033 (Common Injuries with Nurses/ Healthcare )

This paper will focus on the types of injuries the healthcare workers encounter during their daily workflow.

The first common type injury that is spraining and twisting while handling material or a possible slipping and falling during operations; most nurses may lose balance and fall down while handling patients or slip on wet floors thereby causing harm to their body parts. The affected body parts usually consist of parts as limbs that might break or sprain leading to swelling and development of infections associated with breakage. Apart from the limbs, the nurses may encounter head breakage due to falling during their workflow. Head bumps may cause serious healthcare concerns since the brain may bleed causing complications that may require hospitalization of the victim.

The other common type of injury is contacting infections while handling the patients. Nurses play a major role in the process of treatment in the healthcare facilities. Nurses are involved in activities such as cleaning the patient and the places they sleep on and changing their clothes. This way, nurses are exposed to possible contraction of the infections suffered by the patients since they are the ones who clean after the and in other situations even feed them. The nurses spend more time with the patients more than the doctors and other physiologists in the healthcare facilities thus they are the most prone to getting infections from the patients.

Apart from the nurses, doctors may also be exposed to infection since they take part in actual examination and treating of the patients. Violent patients may cause the doctors to lose balance and handle materials such as needles carelessly and may end up injecting themselves by mistake after injecting the patient that may cause transfer of diseases such as HIV/ AIDs from the patients to themselves. Lack of enough materials such as gloves and masks in the healthcare facilities may also put the doctors and other healthcare workers at the risk of contact diseases for instance airborne diseases.

Another type of injury that may occur to the healthcare workers is violence from their collogues and patients. Their fellow workers may batter healthcare workers if any form of disagreement occurs or incase these colleagues become compromised due to health related factors such as insanity or mental incapacitation. Healthcare workers often undergo various processes that may stress them out and cause them to lose their minds, which may lead them to harming not only themselves but also their fellow workmates. Some people are also violent in nature and may use force to make sure what they want is done their way.

What is more, the patients may also harm the workers. Not all patients admitted to hospital are weaklings. Some patients may actually be in the medical institutions because they suffer from mental disorders and give the chance to be free; they may harm the nurses, doctors, and other workers in the healthcare facility. Some patients may also be stubborn and harm the healthcare workers instead of letting them take care of their illnesses, for instance, a patient use force and compel the nurses or doctors to carry out the various test that are supposed to be done on the patients on themselves.

The last form of injury is emotional incapacitation. Healthcare workers are more likely to develop stress related conditions more than any other workers in any career options can. Their job description involves emotional moments with the patients, pain during treatment and trauma. The healthcare workers are the ones who stay with the patients from the time they are admitted, through their treatment and to throughout their recovery process. The whole healing and treatment takes a lot of emotional involvement that may cause various stress related disorders among the healthcare workers.

Stress among the healthcare workers may also be caused by pressure at workplace due to tons of work or understaffing of the departments. Overworking may cause a normal human being to run mad or develop mental disorders thus disrupting their normal functionality in connection to mental working, emotional participation, and physical involvement. CITATION Kel15 l 1033 (Gooch, 2015)I believe I was able to appropriately identified opportunities to mitigate the potential risk because I was able to discuss the various injuries and how they occur therefore providing the clear platform from which the injuries can be prevented from taking place and if they do the possible way to resolve the situation. I will give an example of emotional drainage and stress of the workers whereby I would recommend the healthcare facilities to hire more staff to ensure everyone gets enough rest. More staff will ensure that different shifts get different set of workers but not the exhausted workers from the previous shift. The workers tend to get emotionally involved in patients’ lives either voluntarily or unknowingly a state which can cause damage to the workers in the various departments of the health care facilities.

In conclusion, this paper has attempted to explain the various injuries healthcare workers encounter in the healthcare facilities including; spraining and twisting due to falls, violence, emotional drainage and stress, and exposition to infections. These injuries are able to end careers or limit careers, which is a major loss to the victims. Apart from this hazard, I would like to investigate and research about equipment availability in the healthcare facilities being on e of the major hazardous fields related to emergency preparedness.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Common Injuries with Nurses/ Healthcare . (n.d.). Retrieved from Hardison &Cochran: https://www.lawyernc.com/legal-service/workers-compensation-lawyer/common-worklace-injuries/nurses-healthcare/

Gooch, K. (2015, July 14). Clinical Leadership and Infection Control. Retrieved from Beckers Hospital Review: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/4-common-nursing-hazards-demanding-hospitals-attention.html