An overview of compensated work-related injuries among Korean firefighters from 2010 to 2015

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough one in two firefighters in South Korea have experienced work-related injuries, there are few studies which show the overview description on work-related injuries and its analysis regarding such causes. Therefore, we aimed to show the overview of compensated work-related injuries in order to serve fundamental data for establishing prevention policies on work-related injuries for Korean firefighters.MethodsWe requested the all claimed work-related injury data of Korean firefighters from 2010 to 2015 to the Korean National Fire Agency (NFA). The data from NFA including 2457 claimed cases was analyzed and we confirmed, 2154 approved work-related injuries for the kinds of job activities, cause of accident and type of injuries. Among 2154 approved cases, we analyzed more variables for the sex, age, and job duration of 1344 compensated cases through served text file on summary of accident.ResultsThe Government Employees Pension Service (GEPS) recognized 2154 (87.7%) approved work-related injuries among 2457 claimed cases. The incidence of work-related injuries per 1000 firefighters was 9.8 persons. By region, the incidence of work-related injuries per 1000 firefighters ranged from a maximum of 14.5 to a minimum of 4.0. The most common job activity caused the accident was fire suppression (18.0%), followed by Emergency medical services (EMS) (17.5%) and training (10.7%). The most common cause of these accident was movement imbalance (30.3%), followed by falls (18.9%) and traffic accident (13.4%). In these work-related injuries, sprains and bruises were the most common type of injury (27.2%), and the most commonly injured body site was the upper and lower back (25.3%). Data from identified 1344 firefighters showed that 1264 (94.0%) were male and 80 (6.0%) were female. Age group was the highest in the 40s with 623 cases (46.4%), and job duration was the highest with 650 cases in 5–10 years (48.4%).ConclusionIn this study, we could obtain the preliminary data necessary to establish preventive measures, including the cause of accident and region with high accident rates. However, the number of applications for compensated injuries was very small compared to the frequency of injuries found in previous studies. The lack of appropriate treatment suggested that many firefighter injuries can become chronic. In this study, we suggest that it is necessary to introduce an injury monitoring system and improve the accessibility of compensated injuries.Trial registrationCR318031. Registered 20 June 2018.

Stress Relief and Related Factors in Camp Program for Firefighters

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The effects of psychological risk factors at work on cognitive failures through the accident proneness

“…As well as, the workers with casual work contracts and domestic subcontractors may be less committed to the organization and perform their responsibility with lower attention and in turn, more cognitive failure. Based on the obtained results, the They showed that the scores of verbal memory, attention -concentration, immediate memory, and total learning were lower for the shift workers [28]. The results of a systematic review and meta-analysis show that the shift workers have a trend toward an increased risk of chronic sleep disturbances such as insomnia symptoms (risk ratio 1.16, 95% Confidence interval 0.97-1.38) [29].…”

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Shifted Firefighter Health Investigation by Personal Health Insurance Record in Taiwan

“…These mainly involve sleeping, 14 , 15 depression and stress, 16 , 17 cognitive functions, 18 cancer, 19 , 20 hypertension, 21 physical activity and obesity, 22–24 metabolic syndromes, 25 and injuries and musculoskeletal disorders. 26 , 27 According to the 2154 work injuries that were recorded from 2010 to 2015 in South Korea in reference, 28 the majority of injuries concerned the upper and lower back (25.3%). Such study results were similar to the results of this study.…”