Canadian Safety Reporter

April 2016

Focuses on occupational health and safety issues at a strategic level. Designed for employers, HR managers and OHS professionals, it features news, case studies on best practices and practical tips to ensure the safest possible working environment.

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Workplace injuries can have mental health costs Physical injuries often come with collateral damage — depression, PTSD BY LIZ BERNIER PHYSICAL INJURIES are certainly costly and disruptive to the workplace in and of themselves, but in many cases they can cause a secondary injury as well. There is a solid link between physical injuries and psychological injuries such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to Therese Richmond, professor of nursing and associate NEWS BRIEF Safety Reporter Canadian www.safetyreporter.com April 2016 Recovery > pg. 2 ONTARIO PROPOSAL PRESUMES WORK- RELATED PTSD IN FIRST RESPONDERS Post-traumatic stress disorder, first responders, and presumed entitlement to benefits: What does it mean for Ontario employers? pg. 3 WORKER FIRED FOR NOT WEARING PPE GETS TO PUT IT BACK ON pg. 5 Supervisors and co-workers felt worker's safety violation was minor, so termination was excessive: Court PHYSICAL AND MENTAL INJURIES CONTRIBUTED TO LACK OF WORKER'S CO-OPERATION Benefits discontinued after worker didn't co-operate with return-to-work efforts pg. 7 INSIDE Educational assistant assaulted by student wins mental stress benefits Frequent assaults by special needs student were traumatic and not an expected part of the job: Tribunal BY JEFFREY R. SMITH PHYSICAL ABUSE from a special needs student is beyond what is expected in the job of an educational assistant who is entitled to benefits for mental stress, the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal has ruled. The worker was hired by an Ontario school board in 2001 and became an educational as- sistant (EA) for "intensive sup- port for low incidence-high risk needs (developmental disabili- ties, physical disabilities)" a year later. This category of EA quali- fied the worker to assist students with physical disabilities requir- ing assistive devices such as feed- INJURIES AT WORK MAY INCREASE RISK OF LOSING ONE'S JOB: U.S. STUDY (Reuters Health) — A new U.S. study of nursing home workers finds that within six months of an injury, work- ers are more likely to lose their jobs. Compared to uninjured col- leagues, workers who were hurt were more than twice as likely to be fired in the next six months. Workers who had been injured multiple times were also twice as likely to quit their jobs in the next six months, the study found. "The results demonstrate higher risk of being fired but we don't have data to say why exactly workers are being fired. We can only say that their risks are higher," said lead au- thor Cassandra Okechukwu of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. In general, workers are most like- ly to be injured during the first few months in a new environment, the study team notes in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Job turnover increases the chances an injured worker will be injured again in a new workplace. People injured more than once were more likely to choose to leave their jobs than uninjured workers, while people injured only once were more likely to be fired. Credit: Shutterstock Breakdown > pg. 8 PM40065782

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