AGED CARE WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY HAZARD EXPOSURES
ViVA blended science engaged care staff in work analysis. They determined physical and psychoscial risk exposures, advising on work re-design interventions.
PROJECT LEAD
PROJECT TEAM
PARTNERED WITH
Software Solutions, ErgoAnalyst
Context
Residential aged care settings expose healthcare workers to physical and psychosocial hazards. The healthcare industry is renowned for striving to address patient or resident care at any cost, sometimes at the expense of the health and wellbeing of their staff and carers. This is problematic because it is difficult to recruit and retain skilled staff, impacting on care provision.
Challenge
A residential aged care provided wanted to address their staff’s most significant health and safety hazard exposures. They were uncertain on how to commence the project.
Approach
The ViVA human factors team helped the organisation develop their design brief and challenge statements. The team used a task-based empirical data collection approach, visiting several sample locations to observe work and interview staff, combined with a review of scientific and industry literature. ViVA determined hazard trends and conducted relevant risk assessments on acute and cumulative health exposures. This enabled the aged care provider to learn about the realities of staff work experiences and prevalent risk factors.
Outcomes
ViVA determined acute and cumulative manual task, cognitive, and psychosocial hazard exposures for nurses, nurse aides, kitchen, laundry, and maintenance staff. They produced visual communication tools including empathy mapping and job analysis. They provided recommendations with data-drive risk reduction calculations on intervention strategies, including environmental, equipment, job design, and training areas to help the organisation prioritise their work re-design.