New Publication Spotlight: Ensuring a Positive Practice Environment: Occupational Safety and Health for Health Worker Productivity
For health workers around the world, providing high-quality care shouldn’t be hazardous to their own health. A doctor in Tanzania, for example, shouldn’t have to risk HIV infection because there is no postexposure prophylaxis when she is accidently stuck by a patient’s needle. A Bangladeshi lab technician shouldn’t have to endure constant headaches from chemical exposure. A Congolese midwife shouldn’t have to fear for her safety when traveling at night to tend to a mother in labor.
A new CapacityPlus technical brief, Ensuring a Positive Practice Environment: Occupational Safety and Health for Health Worker Productivity, illuminates the numerous hazards that health workers face on the job. While measures to ensure occupational safety and health (OSH) are widely viewed as essential contributors to national workforce health and productivity, just 5%-10% of workers in developing countries have adequate occupational health services. Among health workers, the rate of on-the-job injuries has increased in the last decade.
Authors Rachel Deussom, Wanda Jaskiewicz, Elizabeth Adams, and Kate Tulenko outline ways to make health workers’ safety a higher-level policy issue and show how to create working environments that prioritize occupational health. They argue that OSH should not be sidelined as a service delivery issue, and draw on the Positive Practice Environment Campaign as an important approach to bring OSH policies to practice.
“Addressing safety issues in the workplace can actually help to address other service delivery issues,” says Deussom. “Investing in occupational health is definitely a worthy return on investment: it improves worker morale and productivity. And it can be really empowering for a health facility team to think about what is missing and what they can do to turn things around. Positive Practice Environment elements—like encouraging a culture of mutual trust, fairness, and respect to make sure everyone is safe on the job—can have far-reaching benefits, including reducing gender-based discrimination, motivating workers, and building a team.”
To learn more, read the technical brief, available as an interactive online version and a PDF. And please let us know what you think; we welcome your feedback.
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