Edmonton, Alberta — A current study of staff’ compensation claims filed by staff in long-term care services shows that almost all concerned care aides and musculoskeletal accidents.

Researchers on the University of Alberta reviewed 2014-2018 information from the Workers’ Compensation Board of Alberta, which included greater than 3,300 staff’ comp claims from 25 long-term care services. They checked out staff’ roles, harm varieties and missed workdays.

Care aides, who present a lot of the hands-on affected person care in long-term services, made up 62.1% of the claimants and accounted for the very best share of claims stemming from extreme harm (67.7%) – or these requiring 31 or extra days of incapacity. Overall, 5.1% of the claims have been categorized as extreme accidents.

Regulated well being professionals (13.5%) and housekeeping/upkeep (8.8%) made up the subsequent largest teams of claimants to maintain extreme accidents on the job.

In addition, a lot of the claims concerned traumatic accidents to the muscle tissues, tendons, ligaments or joints. “Bodily reaction and exertion” was described in practically half of the claims.

Other key findings:

• 90.7% of the claimants have been girls, with 73% of them over the age of 40.
• Among claims with no days of incapacity, wounds and burns (27.3%) have been probably the most common harm kind.
• The largest proportion of claims with fewer than 31 days of incapacity have been again accidents (20.4%).

“Care aides, those at the greatest risk of injury, often face precarious employment, with nearly a quarter of care aides working at more than one home,” the researchers write. “Ensuring that such staff recognize the importance of injury reporting, and that any real or perceived repercussions of reporting are minimized, should be central to worker safety protocols.”