Stubbornly high rates of health care worker injury - Healthy Debate - 0 views
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In Ontario, the hazards of health care work were dramatically highlighted during the SARS crisis. Overall, 375 people contracted SARS in the spring of 2003. Over three quarters were infected in a health care setting, of whom 45% were health care workers.
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Justice Archie Campbell led a commission to learn from SARS, and highlighted the danger for staff working in health care settings – and in this case, hospitals. The report opens by stating “hospitals are dangerous workplaces, like mines and factories, yet they lack the basic safety culture and workplace safety systems that have become expected and accepted for many years in Ontario mines and factories.”
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Workplace injuries have been steadily declining over the past two decades. In 1987, 48.9 of 1,000 working Canadians received some form of workers’ compensation for injury on the job, and this has declined continuously to 14.7 per 1,000 in 2010. While injury rates for health care workers have declined slightly over that same time period, they remain stubbornly difficult to change.
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