1 / 9

Workplace Injuries Among Firefighters

Understanding the True N ature of Firefighting Injuries. Workplace Injuries Among Firefighters. As a young adult interested in building a career as a firefighter, I frequently receive negative reactions about the dangers of such a hazardous occupation.

dorjan
Download Presentation

Workplace Injuries Among Firefighters

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Understanding the True Nature of Firefighting Injuries Workplace Injuries Among Firefighters

  2. As a young adult interested in building a career as a firefighter, I frequently receive negative reactions about the dangers of such a hazardous occupation. • In order to understand these negative reactions, I have compiled academic research to achieve an accurate understanding of the nature of workplace injuries among firefighters.

  3. Individual Susceptibility • It is important to understand that every person’s susceptibility to injury in the workplace is highly variable. • According to the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, “age, tenure, gender, marital status, type of injury, and wage variables” are significant factors in determining the duration and frequency of firefighting injuries (Liao, Arvey, Butler and Nutting, 2001)

  4. Impact of Modern Society • Due to the manufacturing of better safety equipment and the standardization of better safety procedures, the amount of burn injuries among firefighters has greatly decreased while the number of structural fires has slightly increased.

  5. Nature of Injuries • The primary cause of serious injuries among firefighters have been identified as trauma, thermal injury and smoke inhalation. • However, only 4.3% of workplace injuries are classified as “having some impedance of normal function,” (Poplin, Harris, Pollack, Peate, and Burgess, 2012).

  6. Alternatively, 95.6% of workplace injuries among firefighters are classified as “minor in severity.” • According to this study from the University of Arizona, “One-third of all injuries resulted from physical exercise activities, while patient transport, training drills and fireground operations resulted in 16.9%, 11.1% and 10.2% of injuries, respectively.”

  7. Conclusion • After pursuing academic research on the topic, I believe that factual statistics on the frequency, nature, and severity of workplace injuries among firefighters help to alleviate the negative outlook people have towards firefighting as a profession.

  8. Works Cited • Fabio, A., Myduc, T., Strotmeyer, S., Wei, L., & Schmidt, E. (2002). Incident-Level Risk Factors for Firefighter Injuries at Structural Fires. Journal Of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 44(11), 1059. • Poplin, G. S., Harris, R. B., Pollack, K. M., Peate, W. F., & Burgess, J. L. (2012). Beyond the fireground: injuries in the fire service. Injury Prevention, 18(4), 228-233. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2011-040149 • Guidotti, T., & Clough, V. (1992). Occupational health concerns of firefighting. Annual Review of public health, 13, 151-171. doi: 10.1146/annurev.pu.13.050192.001055 • Rabbitts, A., Alden, N., Scalabrino, M., & Yurt, R. (2005). Outpatient firefighter burn injuries: A 3-year review. Journal of Burn Care & Rehabilitation, 26(4), 348-351. Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/burncareresearch/Abstract/2005/07000/Outpatient_Firefighter_Burn_Injuries__A_3_Year.8.aspx • Liao, H., Arvey, R., Butler, R., & Nutting, S. (2001). Correlates of work injury frequency and duration among firefighters. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 6(3), 229-242. doi: 10.1037/1076-8998.6.3.229

More Related