Study of occupational injuries in personnel of Western Azerbaijan Forensic Medicine Organizations in 2016

Background and aims: Accident is an unplanned and damaging occurrence that leads to unusual pattern of life activity that caused by an unsafe measure and unpleasant work conditions or both of them. Occupational injury is an accident occurring during the work and can lead to fatal/ nonfatal injuries as a leading cause of the working time and workforce loss. It is among the most important complications of industrialization in all of the countries as an important health problem. Unintentional injuries are the second cause of death in the world. Although a lot of work has been done to reduce of work-related injuries, the incidence of them are high in our country. The World Health Organization has registered these accidents as an epidemic public health problem and has considered them as very important economic, and social risk factors in the world. They are regarded as work-related incident problems that can lead to mental or physical occupational injuries, loss of work, work restraint, fatigue and burnout, or occupation change, also a change in the quality of life of individuals and their families and create irreparable effects. Some researches state that more attention should be paid to work place safety and employees’ health because cure expenses of injuries are increasing. Based on the differences in social condition, religion, gender, age distribution of working employees among different countries, it is difficult to generalize accidents statistics to all of the work places, but the rate of occupational accidents has been increase in in developing countries. Some workplaces are main and riskiest environments in health systems. Also, employees are exposed to many accidents such as sprains and muscle strains resulting from heavy loads lifting, falls or slips, needle-stick, blood and other body fluids contaminations and open wound exposing with blood, cut from knives or scalpels that are important cause of lost hours of work. Continuous exposure to many chemical materials, poor working conditioning, non-continuous job employment and continues work, and pollutants are the important factors which make a high-risk environment of workplace. Moreover, the risk of occupational injuries exists that increase the rate of accident and its damages. Although many important movements are performed to protect employees from occupational injuries, they have not been enough and much works are remained to be done. Having awareness about employees’ demographic characteristics can help health care providers to prevent occupational injuries resulted from their workload, unsafe and indecisiveness occupational behaviors and job-related mistakes with a direct relationship with safety issues. Some studies have suggested that tiredness related to heavy work and working patterns, including shift work, can lead to injuries and tensions among staff who providing services. Other factors such as the physical work environment, organizational and institutional management and policies, and personal habits cause to exposure of employees to many risks of injury and tensions. Exposure to kinds of occupational physical, chemical, psychological, biological, and environmental hazards may cause both short and long-term impact on their health and safety. On the other hand, abusive and incorrect behavior of them toward their clients, many times are being resulted from their bad work situation and health, insufficient quality controls and supervision in their work environment. These injuries are more serious in centers such as forensic medicine organization, and employees of it are at risk of various occupational hazards. They deal with the victims of violence or families of people who suffer from violence or harm. So far, no study has been done to investigate these injuries in our country. Accurate occupational accidents management based on scientific recommendation and analysis of rate statistics is necessary for implementing preventive strategies. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of Study of occupational injuries in employees of forensic medicine organizations in West Azerbaijan province 2016.  Methods: This research is a cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study carried out on 88 employees of forensic medicine organizations in West Azerbaijan province selected by an available and stratified random sampling method. Data were collected by the use of a researcher-made questionnaire including the following two parts: the first part consisted of demographic variables such as gender, age, years of work experience, and organizational position and the second part contained was Dibaj's occupational injury questionnaire designated based on the literature review and previous research that was related to the level of occupational injuries, in which the types of occupational injuries were divided into three general classes and several sub-categories. Data were analyzed by SPSS-18 software. Results: Various factors were effective on the incidence of occupational injuries rate as well as on severity, type and frequency of injuries resulting from work place accidents.  Findings showed that 54 (61.4%) of participants were male and 34 (38.6%) were female, with an average age of 41.6 ± 7.1 years. Also, the average working experience of them was 14.1 ± 7.2 years. In examining occupational injuries, the level of ultra-individual injuries was with high severity in employees, intermediate and interpersonal score of injuries was average. In assessing inter-person injuries, emotional, physical and emotional injuries had a higher severity than other sub- categories. In interpersonal injuries, the damage to the employee relationship with the client was severe. Examining obtained scores from severity of ultra- employees’ damage; the damage related to salary, and occupational security and employee management had the highest score. Eventually, it was observed that there was a significant relationship between income and individual interpersonal injuries  and job satisfaction with intra-personal injuries, interpersonal injuries and ultra-individual injuries (p≤0.05). Conclusion: The findings of this study and other researches have revealed that work places are a high risk environment that its consequences can lead to many adverse accidents. Therefore, identifying the effective factors can help in the identification and prevention of risks and their analysis and correct management that can decrease the rate of occupational injuries on working sites. As mentioned above, the accidents frequency can be affected by demographic characteristics and environmental situation. In this regard, improvement of influencing factors is vital and can be recommended as effective method for prevention of accident. With regard to the relationship between demographic characteristics and environmental situation and occupational accidents, increased awareness of organization managers as well as its employees about safety knowledge, collaborative management, improved incentive system for employee safety and management of occupational stress and finding the affective ways to decrease of them can develop employees' abilities to work in a safe condition. People who are involved in heavy physical shifts were more likely to face with occupational injuries due to tiredness and lack of mental concentration, it seems that providing opportunities for motivation of accountability, gathering and analysis of work place information, appropriate selection, help to prepare a proper managing plan and assessing, and training workshops for in service skills education may be a useful method to improvement of motivation for employees. It is suggested that policy makers, by allocating sufficient resources to educating and increasing the skills of the employees and providing necessary equipment, and improving appropriate policy guidelines for progressing the work environment will decrease the number of occupational injuries occurrence. On the other hand, organizing purposeful meetings with employees of the organization and encouraging them to state their failures and problems in the workplace may help policy makers and managers to solve their problems. In view of the importance of the occupational injuries issues in different countries and resulted damages resulting, a standard registration system of injuries and skillful personnel is needed in order to get more exact and reliable results. Since a number of injuries may be prevented, programs such as using physical and mental safety equipment, employees’ education and controlling their work place can be effective in decreasing the number of the accidents. Following the work safety plans, knowing about work safety rules will prevent the occurrence of the resulting injuries. Therefore, promotion of risk perception through setting useful policies and education should be considered for general risk management. Moreover, it should be noted that organization managers’ special attention to providing particular protective tools for their staff in hazardous work place can significantly decrease accidents. On the other hand, educators are asked to use theories and patterns in preventive education when they are providing their educational programs in order to achieve a better result and promote the efficiency of training programs, as well as using the new methods and tools. Theories and models can be useful in different phases of assessing, managing, planning, implementation, and evaluation of any intervention, as they cooperate to the understanding of an optimal healthy behavior and explanation of its necessity and diagnosis of effective factors, so that the most useful goals can be accomplished for strategic programs. To improve planning, it is necessary to provide information to decision makers at a national level. Another important item is a training program that must be provided to protect employees at workplaces. Improvement of working standards, and progress of human resources and their occupational health should be considered vital elements of the national strategy with government collaboration are recommended. Keywords: occupational injuries, organization’s staff, forensic medicine