Occupational Injuries Among Emergency Responders

Details

• Personal Author:
  Jackson, Larry L. ; Reichard AA
• Description:
  Background: Emergency responders frequently incur injuries while providing medical, fire, and law enforcement services. National surveillance systems provide fragmented perspectives on responder injuries because they omit specific classes of workers (e.g., government or volunteers); they report only selected injuries; and employment information is incomplete. Methods: We characterized injuries among emergency medical services (EMS), firefighting, and police occupations by using data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System - Occupational Supplement (NEISS-Work) for injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments in 2000-2001. Results: Sprains and strains were the leading injury (33-41%) among EMS, firefighter, and police occupations. Police officers and career firefighters had the highest injury rates (8.5 and 7.4 injuries per 100 full-time equivalent workers, respectively). Conclusions: The physical demands of emergency response are a leading cause of injuries that may benefit from similar interventions across the occupations. To assess risk, improved exposure data need to be acquired, particularly for volunteers. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Accident Prevention Accidents Accidents, Occupational Emergency Responders Firefighters Law Enforcement Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Accident-prevention Accident-rates Accident-statistics Author Keywords: Emergency Responder Emergency-responders Emergency Medical Services Fire-fighters Firefighter Injuries Injury-prevention Law-enforcement Law-enforcement-workers Law Enforcement Nonfatal Occupational Injuries Paramedic Paramedical-services Police Police-officers Sheriff Surveillance-programs Traumatic-injuries

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• ISSN:
  0271-3586
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSR - Division of Safety Research
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-11
• Volume:
  53
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20036074
• Citation:
  Am J Ind Med 2010 Jan; 53(1):1-11
• Contact Point Address:
  Audrey A. Reichard, Division of Safety Research, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 1095 Willowdale Road, MS 1808, Morgantown, WV 26505
• Email:
  akr5@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2010
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:6f891aa5159a534f1a1eb2fa23f305a7738705807aea903c31573d1e9523ad714e68fd01707cc80079801eefac477f7f377749f637ebce691a7c1285d878ed0d
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/187668/cdc_187668_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 133.55 KB ]