Health and Safety Hazards

Health care workers have identified five major risks to their health and safety.

Workload and stress

HEU’s Anti-Stress Initiative identified chronic stress as one of the most serious problems facing health care workers today. Our anti-stress brochure – Stress. Had Enough? – offers practical ideas on reducing stressful workplace conditions.

A companion Workplace Anti-Stress Guide has many more facts on fighting stress, and is available through your local union office.

HEU has also created a Workload Incident Report form for members to fill-out and return to their local executive for appropriate action and distribution.

Violence in the workplace

More and more HEU members face violence and aggressive behaviours at work, especially workers in the community and other facilities who often work alone or short-staffed.

OHSAH has an excellent section on their website – Violence Prevention – that shares information on current research and best practices, to facilitate communication on this important issue within the health care sector.

Injuries (MSI and Mental Health)

Although mental health is becoming a growing problem among health care workers, musculoskeletal injuries (MSI) remain the most-reported injuries in the field.

Prevention and Early Active Return to Work Safely (PEARS) is another OHSAH initiative whose mandate is “to reduce the incidence, duration, time loss, and related costs of workplace MSIs through early intervention and the implementation of preventative strategies such as ergonomic assessments and workplace accommodation.”

Exposure to chemicals

In this era of superbugs, there is increasing attention paid to the fact that health care workers are continually exposed to infectious air-borne diseases. But what most people don’t realize is that toxic chemicals found in various cleaning supplies – as well as other pathological and diagnostic materials and treatments – are also putting workers at risk.

In the 90s, HEU – along with several other unions – spearheaded a successful research project that examined the effects of chemical exposure and potential cancer-causing agents in the workplace. That groundbreaking research led to vast changes in the chemicals used in health care facilities and ultimately in other public institutions.

Unfortunately, private contractors new to health care, and with an emphasis on cost-cutting, have once again made toxic exposure a vital issue.

If you are concerned about exposure to chemicals in your workplace, contact your local occupational health and safety steward. And for more information about toxins in the workplace, check out the Labour Environmental Alliance Society.

Needlestick injuries

To address the alarming rate of health care workers suffering sharps injuries, HEU – along with the British Columbia Nurses’ Union, Health Sciences Association, British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union, and Service Employees International Union – successfully lobbied for amendments to the BC Occupational Health & Safety Regulation (section 6.36) that would require the use of safety engineered medical devices (SEMDs) for the prevention of sharps/needlestick injuries.