Sangyo eiseigaku zasshi = Journal of occupational health最新文献

Objectives: The number of part-time staff is increasing every year, and they are becoming very essential in completing the workforce. Healthcare and assurance for part-timers will be an important issue in the future. The purpose of our study was to collect recent data and examine the status of health management for part-time employees in workplaces.

Methods: We administered a questionnaire to part-time staff at 14,000 workplaces that were randomly selected from a nationwide list of workplaces. Of the 4,718 respondents, 4,652 valid cases were analyzed. Part-timers were classified as those working more than 3/4 (Category 1), more than 1/2 and less than 3/4 (Category 2), and less than 1/2 (Category 3) of the routine working hours of full-time employees.

Results: A total of 97.2% of workplaces conducted regular medical health check-ups (medical check-ups) for full-time employees. The percentage of workplaces conducting medical check-ups for part-timers was lower as their working hours were fewer; only 32.2% of workplaces conducted medical check-ups for Category 3 part-timers. The percentages were lower for smaller workplaces, and workplaces with 29 or fewer employees had the lowest percentage for Category 3 part-timers (27.9%). The percentage of employers bearing the full cost of medical check-ups was lower for Category 1 (90.5%), 2 (87.7%), and 3 (85.0%) part-timers than that for full-time employees (93.7%).

Conclusions: The rate of regular medical check-ups in workplaces was lower for part-timers, as their working hours were shorter, and workplaces were smaller. Expanding health management in workplaces may be necessary owing to the diversity in working styles.

Objectives: The number of workers dispatched to developing countries has increased recently. The sanitary conditions in these countries are different from those in developed countries and from what the workers are used to. Therefore, health control, especially infection control, is an important consideration for working there. In this study, we investigate workers' needs as well as the occupational physicians' skills concerning working in developing countries. We propose a more effective education system for health control.

Methods: Regarding workers who have lived in developing countries, we surveyed the company profiles, duration of stay, vaccination status, infectious education, medical assistance, and satisfaction with infection control strategies of their employer companies. Regarding occupational physicians, we surveyed their profiles, their experiences in consultation, and advice from/to the workers dispatched to developing countries as well as their suggestive advice for staying there.

Results: Factors that contributed to workers' satisfaction with their employment companies were prior education and health consulting services in addition to company size. Many occupational physicians believed that this kind of information should be supplied but they did not have the confidence to provide it.

Conclusions: Workers who are dispatched overseas should receive prior education and access to health consulting services. It is necessary for information providers such as occupational physicians to be knowledgeable in travel medicine.

Objectives: This study aimed to clarify the health of technical intern trainees and factors that affect their health and examine the necessary support.

Methods: Articles related to the health of technical intern trainees, published between January 2010 and September 2019, were extracted from databases (Ichushi-Web, CiNii Articles, and news archives) using the keywords "technical intern training" and "health." Additional articles were extracted by hand-searching related reports and magazines. The articles were sorted using the partial Bernard Berelson method of content analysis and classified into the components of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF).

Results: There were 24 categories, 71 subcategories, and 422 recording units extracted from 127 documents. Using the ICF classification, the 【Environmental factors】 component had the largest number of recording units, with the "support from supervising and implementing organizations" (n = 108) and "inadequate enforcement of labor-related laws" (n = 48) categories. This was followed by the 【Health condition】 component, with the "death of technical intern trainees" (n = 27) and "increase of tuberculosis cases" (n = 24) categories.

Conclusions: It is assumed that while some technical intern trainees are in a high-risk situation because of the difficulty of receiving medical care and severe working conditions that may worsen their health, including the development of brain and heart disease and tuberculosis, some receive positive effects such as early detection and treatment of diseases through health checks. In addition to improving the working environment, it is important to translate the results of health checks into trainees' understandable languages, provide supplementary explanations of the results, and support the promotion of multicultural coexistence.

Objectives: Unemployment or job change due to treatment for a disease is affected by various factors such as disease type, degree of disability, and workplace patient support. This study aimed to clarify the factors affecting the unemployment/job-change rate among workers who had designated intractable diseases.

Methods: A questionnaire survey was administered to 3,210 designated patients with intractable diseases who underwent applications for renewal of medical care subsidies at the Hirakata City Public Health Center during fiscal year 2019 (July-December). Of these patients, 539 workers aged 20-59 years who were employed as regular workers, temporary contract worker/dispatched workers, and part-time workers when they became designated intractable diseases were subjects of the analysis. Unemployment/job-change due to the treatment for a designated intractable disease was treated as an event occurrence, while the absence of unemployment/job-change due to disease at the time of the survey were considered censored cases. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to determine the trend of the unemployment/job-change rate associated with the duration of work. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to examine the relationship between unemployment/job-change and factors such as gender, age at onset, disease groups, activities of daily living, types of employment, experienced workplace supports (e.g., reduced working hours and hourly paid leave), and existence of insoluble medical difficulties at the workplace.

Results: The unemployment/job-change rate due to treatment for designated intractable disease was 19.4%. Significantly independent factors of unemployment/job-change were the following: 50s at onset (compared to those in their 30s, HR = 2.55, 95% CI (1.21-5.37)), requiring outing assistance (compared to going out alone, 2.31 (1.13-4.71)), being a temporary contract worker/dispatched worker (compared to a regular worker, 2.66 (1.20-5.89)), existence of insoluble medical difficulties at workplace (4.15 (2.43-7.09)). Experienced workplace support was not a significant factor in preventing unemployment/job-change.

Conclusions: Age at onset, degree of disability, form of employment, and existence of insoluble medical difficulties at the workplace were significantly associated with unemployment/job change due to treatment for designated intractable diseases. The relationship between workplace patient supports and unemployment/job-change was not clear, but to reduce medical difficulties in the workplace, workplace supports must be expanded. Given that workplace support is not an obligatory effort for employers, it is necessary to establish a system where employers can easily promote workplace support.

Objectives: Although self-rated health (SRH), the self-evaluation of one's own health status, has been reported to be associated with the immune status, the relationship between three different SRH measures (global, self-comparative, and age-comparative) with inflammatory markers as well as the relative strength of these associations by age are not well understood. The current study investigated the associations between SRH measures and inflammatory markers among nursing home employees.

Methods: A sample of 120 Japanese employees at a nursing home (90 women and 30 men), aged 21-68 years (mean, 40.9 years), underwent a blood test for the measurement of inflammatory markers (interferon-γ, interleukin [IL]-4, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor [TNF]-α, white blood cell count) and SRH during the annual health checkup. Multiple regression analysis adjusted for covariates was performed to analyze the relationship between inflammatory markers and SRH measures stratified by age, that is, aged < 40 years (younger age group) and 40 years and over (older age group).

Results: Among the participants aged 40 years and over, poor global SRH was significantly associated with an increase in IL-6, while poor age-comparative SRH was significantly associated with an increase in TNF-α among participants aged < 40 years in the fully adjusted model controlling for potential confounders. Age-comparative SRH was also significantly associated with an increase in IL-6 among all participants. Self-comparative SRH was not significantly associated with inflammatory markers.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that three SRH measures are not equivalently associated with inflammatory markers, especially when the analyses were performed separately for the younger and older populations. This implies that not only differences in forms of SRH but also in age modify the relationship between SRH and inflammatory markers.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to clarify the needs and issues of continuing employment and educational support for foreign care worker candidates (hereinafter referred to as candidates) to acquire national qualifications.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 people who took and passed the National Examination for Care Workers. The data was analyzed using the constant comparative method of the grounded theory approach. The validity of the results was examined by member checks and peer debriefing.

Results: With "the wall in the process of acquiring national qualifications" as the core category, four categories were extracted as factors related to foreign care workers and accepting facilities, and six categories were extracted as factors related to accepting facilities and educational support.

Conclusions: We considered that the needs and issues of continuation of employment and educational support from the perspective of successful applicants are diverse across both training and practical aspects, and are related to the protection of the rights of foreign candidates. Educational support for acquiring national qualifications should meet various needs related to working and learning at the same time, and there are limitations to current training programs. It is necessary to evaluate and improve the current program based on this new knowledge.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to summarize a combined competency domains and items set for occupational hygienists in Japan since there is a lack of such a set due to the existence of several national certification specialists in the field of occupational hygiene.

Methods: A literature search, Kitagawa Jiro's (KJ) method study, Delphi method study, and a questionnaire survey were utilized. The domains, roles, knowledge, and skills included in the home pages and reports of representative organizations in the USA, UK, and Japan, and those in papers found through Google Scholar were compared and rearranged to about 150 items. From these, occupational hygiene competency domains and items were discussed and selected by five occupational hygiene specialists using the KJ method and prioritized by 13 occupational hygiene specialists using the Delphi method. Additionally, responses of 53 union members of occupational hygiene specialists from a university were obtained by a questionnaire survey.

Results: Ten occupational competency domains and 147 items were identified through the literature search, 10 domains and 135 items through the KJ method, six domains and 63 items through the Delphi method, and lastly, five domains and 51 items were identified through the questionnaire survey. The five domains included (1) discovering problems and potential developments and making decisions, (2) solving problems and promoting developmental occupational hygiene, (3) communicating with stakeholders and recovering in an emergency, (4) empowering organizations to which you belong, and (5) educating and facilitating workers.

Conclusions: Although the 53 subjects in the questionnaire survey were predominantly 20 to 30 years old and more than half of the 13 Delphi method participants were relatively old veterans, there was a positive correlation between the evaluation of 63 items by both methods. These results suggest that the occupational hygiene competency set of five domains and 51 items obtained in this study is a combined competency set that is representative of Japan.

Purpose: Humor significantly contributes to reducing stress and invigorating the workplace. Few studies have restricted the targets of humor expression to colleagues or investigated its relationship with stress reactions and social support of colleagues. This study aimed to investigate the expression of humor by nurses toward their colleagues, and examine its relationship with the physical and mental stress reactions and social support of colleagues.

Participants and methods: A self-administered questionnaire survey was administered to 765 nurses working at eight hospitals in a city in northeastern Japan. The "Brief Job Stress" questionnaire results were used to identify physical and mental stress reactions and social support of the colleagues. We also used a 15-item humor expression scale (Tsukawaki et al., 2009a) to analyze three humor types: "aggressive humor" (dark jokes), "playful humor" (puns and other wordplays), and "self-disparaging humor" (masochistic or self-deprecating jokes). Statistical analyses were performed to examine the relationship between the patterns of humor, physical and mental stress reactions, and social support of colleagues.

Results: Questionnaires were obtained from 672 respondents (collection rate: 87.8%), and 623 participants remained for the analyses (valid response rate: 81.4%) after eliminating incomplete/inadequate entries. The nurses expressed "self-disparaging humor" most frequently toward their colleagues. Multiple regression analysis of the attributes affecting each humor type revealed significant relationships between "aggressive humor" and sex, presence/absence of position/rank, and presence/absence of night shift; "self-disparaging humor" and sex and presence/absence of position/rank; and "playful humor" and sex and age group. Meanwhile, social support of colleagues was significantly related to age group, self-disparaging humor, vitality, irritability/frustration, and physical malaise.

Discussion and conclusion: Nurses mostly used self-disparaging humor to communicate with colleagues, which displayed support toward self and others. Male nurses utilized a greater variety of humor as compared to their female counterparts. Nurses with a higher position/rank were more likely to use aggressive humor, such as light sarcasm, or self-disparaging humor, such as laughing at their own mistakes. These results demonstrated that the usage of puns to lighten the mood and other playful humor could increase with age. This study suggested that discussing one's own shortcomings and mistakes with humor and working energetically increased the social support from one's colleagues. Furthermore, approaching or performing one's work with displays of irritation and poor mental and physical health could reduce such support.