Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine最新文献

Context: The contemporary workplace creates a challenge toward physicians and their teams. They are forced into a situation, in which to be competitive they must have skills outside of their medical specialty, such as health management, pedagogy, and information and communication technologies.

Aim: To analyze the level of stress and burnout among the medical employees in the hospital care.

Settings and design: Healthcare professionals from three private, municipal, and regional hospitals filled a questionnaire in the time period January-March 2021.

Methods and material: An adapted Maslach Burnout Inventory 55 question questionnaire was used and analyzed.

Statistical analysis used: One-way ANOVA, correlation, and multiple regression analysis in SPSS.

Results: We identified high levels of emotional exhaustion (>62% report high signs or above), high levels of depersonalization (>70% report signs of depersonalization), and low levels of personal accomplishment (<39% have below average sense of achievements).

Conclusions: Despite the physicians and their teams reporting high levels of workload and stress, the satisfaction from work has not diminished and the evaluation for the quality of provided work is still high. Additional research into the topic is required with focus on comparison between hospital physicians and primary care physicians.

Context: Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) due to obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is reported to be a major contributor to many road traffic accidents. Lack of awareness and diagnosis of OSA among public transport workers remains a threat to the society.

Aims: The primary aim of this study was to assess the risk of OSA among transport drivers of south Kerala using modified Berlin questionnaire. The secondary objective included craniofacial assessment of the high-risk patients identified through the questionnaire using lateral cephalogram.

Settings and design: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 180 transport drivers of south Kerala.

Methods and material: Modified Berlin questionnaire and limited physical examination [body mass index (kg/m²), neck circumference (cm), waist circumference (cm), hip circumference and waist to hip ratio, blood pressure (mm Hg)] were recorded. The screened subjects were categorized as high-risk snorers and low-risk snorers based on modified Berlin questionnaire. Craniofacial morphological variations of high-risk group were assessed by lateral cephalograms.

Statistical analysis used: The descriptive statistics were represented as mean and standard deviation and percentage. Inter-group comparison was performed with independent sample t test.

Results: The study demonstrated 64.4% of subjects were non-snorers and 35.6% were snorers. Furthermore, among the snorers, 46.9% were identified as high-risk snorers, whereas the remaining 53.1% represented low-risk snorers.

Conclusions: The study revealed the concealed risk of OSA among transport drivers could be screened through the questionnaires and demographics assessment. The application of the proposed screening protocol would triage and enhance safety of OSA affected transport drivers.

Background: Unemployment, insufficient resources, family poverty, and poor financial benefits are crucial determinants for internal or external migration of large sections of educated youth.

Aims: To perform a comparative analysis of different levels of job satisfaction and the status of mental morbidity among migrant and nonmigrant population.

Settings and design: A cross-sectional study was employed between March 2016 and October 2017 at the field practice area of one of the tertiary health care institutes in Anand District of Gujarat State of India.

Methods and material: A total of 456 educated and skilled professionals participated in the study. Job descriptive index, Job in General, and Global Health Questionnaire-28 were utilized.

Statistical analysis: The data entry was performed in Epi Info™ 7 followed by data analysis in EPI-INFO Software.

Results and conclusions: The overall job satisfaction in the study was found to be significantly higher among nonmigrants than migrants. All three scores were correlated with each other significantly. Overall, migrants were found to be significantly less satisfied with their jobs in general and more psychologically distressed, as compared to their nonmigrant counterparts.

Background: This systematic review and meta-analysis study evaluates a relationship between occupational exposure to respirable crystalline silica and serum copper (Cu) levels as an indicator for early detection of silicosis.

Materials and methods: A systematic search was conducted, and the quality of results was evaluated in accordance with the guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. The following databases were searched, including Web of Sciences, Scopus, and PubMed from inception until November 2021. The following keywords were selected for searching in the mentioned databases including, "copper" OR "serum copper" AND "silicosis". The mean (standard deviation [SD]) of Cu was extracted for both silicosis and non-silicosis subjects. The differences in mean effect size were pooled using the random-effect model. Heterogeneity and publication bias were evaluated using the I² value and Begg's test and Egger's test, respectively.

Results: A total of 159 studies were initially found, among which eight studies were included in the meta-analysis. Random-effect meta-analysis of these eight studies showed that silicosis patients had higher copper levels than the non-silicosis group with a pooled standardized mean difference (SMD) of 3.02 (95% confidence interval: 0.25, 5.78); I² = 99.3%, P value < 0.001. The subgroup analysis showed that the corresponding figures in those with mean age >40 years and <40 years were 5.79 (2.06, 9.52) and -0.43 (-4.57, 3.70), respectively. Moreover, no publication bias was found in the analyses.

Conclusions: The results of the present study demonstrated that silica exposure may be associated with increasing serum Cu levels.