The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) www.cdc.gov/niosh within CDC, conducts research and makes recommendations for preventing work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths.
The NIOSH system referred to as the “Occupational Health Safety Network” (OHSN) www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/ohsn collects existing injury data to help identify jobs at the highest risk for injury, develops interventions for the safety for hospital staff, and measures the impact of injuries over time.
For example, it has been determined from data that nursing assistants have the highest OSHA recordable injury rates for patient handling and workplace violence injuries. Injuries while handling patients were three times higher among nursing assistants as compared to all healthcare personnel combined.
OHSN in tracking incidents, just recently added new modules capable of tracking sharp injuries and blood and body fluid exposures among healthcare workers. Modules are already tracking slips, trips, falls, patient handling injuries, and workplace violence, but new modules recently put in place are now able to track sharp injuries plus blood and body fluid exposures.
The OHSN system also allows participants to determine the root cause for each incident, identify trends in order to design relevant interventions and then measure their impact. The system analyzes the data and presents it visually with easy-to-read charts.
OHSN hosts facilities across 20 states to provide data. The network can be used to analyze and report workplace specific data to illustrate the magnitude of injury and illness among workers, monitor the trends, and enable members of OHSN gain access to a library of resources specific to the healthcare sector.