New and Emerging Risk Factors in Occupational Health

Abstract

Workplace health and safety is constantly evolving both in developed and developing countries. Under the tumultuous development of technology, working environments are changing, leading to the onset of new occupational hazards and unprecedented risk conditions deriving from the new ways of organizing work. At the same time, progress in medical science, with the knowledge in the fields of genetics, metabolomics, big data, and smart technologies, makes it possible to promptly identify and treat risk conditions that would have escaped notice in the past. Personalized occupational medicine represents the frontier of prevention in the workplace, from the perspective of total worker health and the sustainability of resources. The contributions to this Special Issue range from chemical, physical, and biological to psychosocial risks, and from the search for new ways to control long-known risks, such as mercury toxicity, to observations of the most frequent pathologies in the workplace in the last twenty years, such as repetitive trauma diseases, immunodeficiency transmitted as a result of biological injuries, and violence and psychological trauma in the workplace. New insights are needed in occupational health and safety practice to address the new challenges in this field.

Work–Family Conflict, Emotional Intelligence, and General Self-Efficacy Among Medical Practitioners During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…28,29 Besides, following the practices of advanced countries, occupational health surveillance should be implemented in the workplace setting, especially to tackle the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 30,31 Awareness projects or seminars could be arranged in the future related to EI and its importance in promoting the psychological well-being of medical health workers. These seminars could be advertised to encourage the doctors to attend them.…”

The Effect of Work Safety on Organizational Social Sustainability Improvement in the Healthcare Sector: The Case of a Public Sector Hospital in Pakistan

“…An occupational hazard is an injury or ailment resulting from the work one does or from the surrounding in which one works [ 54 , 55 , 56 ]. The consequences of workplace hazards could be trauma, even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), loss of dignity, anxiety, depression, attempt at suicide, decreased self-esteem, lack of trust in people, premature aging, losing autonomy, injuries, absenteeism, and physical and musculoskeletal injuries [ 57 , 58 ].…”

The impact of resilience on anxiety and depression among grass-roots civil servants in China

“…All these may lead to increasing occupational stress of the grass-roots civil servants. Many kinds of research have shown that career stress could induce physical illness and some psychological problems [8][9][10]. For grass-roots civil servants, stress threatens their health and the work efficiency of the government and social stability.…”