Work-Related Injuries and Health-Related Quality of Life Among US Workers

Abstract

These results confirm that occupational injuries cause significant deficits in the physical component of HRQOL. This highlights the importance of preventing occupational injuries to reduce associated disabilities in the U.S.

Health-Related Quality of Life and Its Determinants among Criminal Police Officers

“…Older age was associated with poorer quality of life (β = −0.016), which corresponds to many studies in the general adult population [44,45,46]. Those who had injuries on duty had lower EQ-5D-3L index scores than those with no injury history (β = −0.233), which is similar to observations from Taiwan [47] and the USA [48]. Previous reports have found that injured policemen also have lower mental health scores, indicating that injury experience simultaneously affects physical and mental HRQoL on a large scale [49].…”

Who is More Injury‐Prone? Prediction and Assessment of Injury Risk

“…There are similarities in certain types of injuries sustained by athletes and workforce population. For example, joint ligament sprains and muscle-tendon strains represent the most common injuries sustained by competitive athletes (Hootman, Dick, & Agel, 2007;Darrow, Collins, Yard, & Comstock, 2009), as well as workers whose jobs impose a high level of physical demand (Baragaba et al, 2016;Oranye et al, 2016). Both athletes and workers often sustain lower back injuries, which can result in persisting impairment of neuromuscular control mechanisms that increase susceptibility to both upper extremity and lower extremity musculoskeletal injuries (Nadler, Malanga, DePrince, Stitik, & Feinberg, 2000;Massé-Alarie, Beaulieu, Preuss, & Schneider, 2015).…”

“…Optimal musculoskeletal function is critically important for full participation in activities of daily living, work, and sports. Musculoskeletal injuries can have a profoundly adverse influence on an individual's health‐related quality of life (Baragaba et al., ). Conventional medical care for injuries is characterized by prolonged restriction of activity, prescription of medication for symptom relief, and frequent referral to a rehabilitation clinic in a separate location for administration of relatively passive therapeutic procedures (Bigos & Davis, ).…”

“…This screening process is believed to identify individual athletes who possess elevated injury risk (Onate et al., ). Such a screening process might be used to identify workers who possess potentially modifiable risk factors for injury, thereby addressing an identified need for improvement of interventions to prevent work‐related disability (Baragaba et al., ).…”

“…Since occupational injuries are often underreported, it is difficult to develop an accurate profile of an individual's injury risk within an organization due to the underperformance of predictive models as well as the differential between actual and reported injuries. Much like athletes, workers with physically demanding activities are highly susceptible to injury and potentially long‐term disability (Baragaba, Alghnam, & Bernacki, ; Oranye, Wallis, Roer, Archer‐Heese, & Aguilar, ). We, therefore, use the context of sport which has been found to be very similar to occupational settings in terms of the nature and severity of injuries that occur in both realms.…”