Objective: Expanding staff levels is a strategy for hospitals to increase their surge capacity. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether emergency health care workers (HCWs) are willing to work during crises or disasters, and which working conditions influence their decisions.
Methods: HCWs in the emergency departments (EDs) and intensive care units (ICUs) of 5 Dutch hospitals were surveyed about various disaster scenarios. For each scenario, HCWs were asked about their willingness to work (WTW) and which conditions would influence their decision. Knowledge, perceived risk, and danger were assessed per scenario.
Results: A total of 306 out of 630 HCWs completed the survey. Influenza epidemics, SARS-CoV-2 pandemics, and natural disasters were associated with the highest WTW rates (69.0%, 63.7%, and 53.3%, respectively). WTW rate was lowest in nuclear incident (4.6%) and dirty bomb (3.3%) scenarios. WTW rate was higher in physicians than in nurses. Male ED HCWs, single HCWs, and childless HCWs were more often willing to work. Personal protective equipment (PPE) and the safety of HCWs' families were the most important working conditions. Perceived knowledge scored lowest in the dirty bomb, biological, and nuclear incident scenarios. These scenarios were rated highest with respect to perceived danger.
Conclusions: WTW depends on disaster type, profession, and department. The provision of PPE and the safety of HCWs' families were found to be the predominant favorable working conditions.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2024.333 | DOI Listing |
Environ Geochem Health
January 2025
Public Health Department, School of Medicine, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Bucaramanga, Colombia.
The "La Esperanza" native mercury mine in Aranzazu, (Caldas, Colombia) was active from 1948 until 1975. Before the final closure of the mine, the company began using dimercaprol (BAL, British Anti-Lewisite) and penicillamine for the treatment of hydrargyrism among workers. Mercury poisoning among miners was frequent due to precarious working conditions, inadequate technology, difficult terrain, and the high toxicity of native mercury within the mine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRisk Anal
January 2025
School of Management, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China.
This study explores the risk management challenges associated with safety-critical systems required to execute specific missions. The working component experiences degradation governed by a continuous-time discrete-state Markov chain, whose failure leads to an immediate system breakdown and safety losses. To enhance system survivability, a limited number of identical spares are available for online replacement throughout the mission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science and Institute for Sustainable and Circular Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO) into sustainable fuels and base chemicals requires precise control over and understanding of activity, selectivity and stability descriptors of the electrocatalyst under operation. Identification of the active phase under working conditions, but also deactivation factors after prolonged operation, are of the utmost importance to further improve electrocatalysts for electrochemical CO conversion. Here, we present a multiscale in situ investigation of activation and deactivation pathways of oxide-derived copper electrocatalysts under CO reduction conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Data
January 2025
Department of System Engineering, University of Pannonia, H-8200, Veszprem, Hungary.
The effect of work content on workload, stress, and performance was not well addressed in the literature, due to the lack of comprehensive conceptualization, problem definition, and relevant dataset. The gap between laboratory-simulated studies and real-life working conditions delays the generalization, hindering the development of performance management and monitoring tools. Contributing to this topic, a data collection effort is organized, which considers unique work conditions and work content factors of a coffee shop, to conceptualize scenarios that better highlight their effect on human performance, thus creating the Work content Effect on BAristas (WEBA) dataset.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Hand Ther
January 2025
Neuroscience Center, King Fahad Specialist Hospital, Dammam, Saudi Arabia; King Salman Center for Disability Research, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Background: Hand-arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS) is a disorder caused by prolonged exposure to hand-held vibrating instruments, commonly observed in industrial contexts such as mining, construction, and manufacturing. It involves symptoms affecting the musculoskeletal, neurological, and vascular systems of the arm and hand.
Purpose: The main aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of HAVS among laborers working in the Khewra salt mines.
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