Shift Work and the Risk of Work Injury
Six to seven percent of workplace injuries are associated with shift work.
| Category | Workplace Wellness: Physical Health |
| Detai | Currently, 25% of Canadian full-time workers aged 19-64 work some form of non-traditional work schedule. There is strong evidence that night, evening, rotating and irregular shifts are associated with an elevated risk of occupational injury. These risks are generally understood to arise from the joint influence of worker fatigue (due to sleep disturbance or long work hours) and typically lower levels of supervision and co-worker support during non-daytime work schedules. Estimates indicate that 6-7% of workplace injuries can be attributed to the higher risk of injury associated with shift work schedules. On the basis of this estimate, an excess of 13,000 compensated injuries (lost-time and no lost-time) to men and 20,000 compensated injuries to women in Ontario can be annually attributed to the higher risk of injury associated with shift work schedules. Among the challenges in conducting high quality population research on the health effects of shift work are: limited information at the population level on work hours, individual work demands and the availability of supervision over the 24 hour clock, and information on the health status of workers who work regular and non-regular work schedules. Surveillance information is a foundation for the identification of potential prevention efforts and can inform the design of more sophisticated research to understand the specific mechanisms of hazards associated with non-regular work hours. The risk of work injury arising from shift work is sufficient to justify developing methods for the routine surveillance of work hours and work injury. The presentation concludes with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of three potential approaches to monitoring work schedules and work injury risk: 1) the use of time of injury information on workers' compensation claims, 2) the use of emergency department records containing proxy information on the time of injury and the attributable cause of injury and 3) the use of labour market panel surveys that collect information on usual work schedule and the incidence of work injury in the previous 12 month recall period. |
| Author | Cameron Mustard, Andrea Chambers, Peter M Smith and Christopher McLeod |
| Publication Date | April 12, 2010 |
| Source | www.iwh.on.ca |
| Format | |
| Availability | Download abstract: Shift Work and the Risk of Work Injury Download presentation: Shift Work and the Risk of Work Injury |
| Related Links | Read article on Scientific Symposium The Health Effects of Shift Work |
