Establishing a Cohort for Occupational Disease of Emergency Medical Workers

A Study on the Establishment of a Cohort for Occupational Disease, Damage Prevention, and Health Management of Emergency Medical Workers

This study aims to understand the epidemiological characteristics, related factors , and current status of occupational diseases and damage that occur in emergency medical workers (doctors and nurses). A number of surveys were conducted on about 100 emergency medical workers for about a year with occupational factors, physical health, and mental health.

• Background :

  1. The importance and public role of emergency medical care

     • Emergency medical care is a public and essential medical service that is directly related to the lives of the public and plays a key role in the domestic medical delivery system.

  2. Health problems of domestic emergency medical staff

     • Emergency medical workers are at higher risk than the general population due to higher work intensity, lack of medical staff, unplanned patient occurrence, and congestion.
     • Most emergency medical workers in Korea are classified as high-risk medical staff and receive special medical checkups once or twice a year. On the other hand, these regular medical checkups are only an evaluation of the overall health status of medical staff, which does not lead to prevention before the deterioration of the health status of individual medical staff.

• Objective : The purpose of this study is to establish a cohort research system to develop prevention and health care solutions by identifying epidemiological characteristics, related factors for occupational diseases, and damage occurring in emergency medical workers (doctors and nurses).

• Design: Observational (Cohort study)

• Setting: In the Department of Emergency at the Samsung Medical Center and other hospitals

• Enrollment : About 100 Emergency medical workers (doctors and nurses)

• Methods: Questionnaire surveys on occupational, mental, physical factors during about 1 year.

Inclusion criteria: The emergency medical workers

• who have heard the explanation of the study and agreed to participate
• aged 18 or older
• have no occupational disease or damage (within 4 weeks) at the time of cohort establishment.

Exclusion criteria:

• Those who disagree with this study
• A person who is not engaged in actual work, such as taking leave of absence, or who does not agree to participate
• Those with occupational diseases or damage at the time of cohort establishment (within 4 weeks)