Health body amends target for injury days

The Regina Qu’appelle Health Region is seeking a second opinion from safety experts about how to lower the rising rate of employee injuries.

John Paul Cullen, the region’s executive director of workforce planning and employment, and three RQHR safety consultants will attend Bridging the Gap — an employee safety health care conference being held in Saskatoon today by the Saskatchewan Association for Safe Workplaces in Health (SASWH).

Cullen is eager to hear keynote speaker Larry Mazzukelli, senior adviser of Chaff & Co., from Chattanooga, Tenn. Mazzukelli was instrumental in helping reverse a long-standing pattern of health care workers injuries and illnesses in a Seattle-area health care facility.

“It will be good to be in a room and connect with others who are sharing a common cause and learn from others who have walked this road with some success,” Cullen said.

During the region’s 201011 fiscal year, the RQHR recorded 7.9 lost-time claims per 100 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees, amounting to nearly 28,000 time-loss days due to injuries.

In September 2011, the region set a target of lowering the number of timeloss days by 15.1 per cent by April.

That target was revised to a 10-per-cent reduction, which would amount to 7.1 time loss claims per 100 FTE employees.

However, according to the third-quarter statistics for 2011-12, there were 21,875 time-loss days.

“If we stay on the path we’re on right now, we’re going to exceed that,” said Cullen, who is responsible for employee health and safety. “Right now, our year-todate is around 6.3 (time-loss claims) so if you straight line project that, it’s probably going to exceed that target ... We have a lot of work to do.”

Cullen couldn’t identify the main problem behind the region’s injury rate.

“This has been a problem for the region for a number of years,” he said. “We have a very well developed employee safety infrastructure. I think we have knowledgeable staff, yet our practice doesn’t seem to align with the efforts we are making. We’re actually working on our own internal strategy that is trying to take a more comprehensive approach to injury reduction.”

He said the region must institute accessible performance targets and measures so employees can gauge performances in real time.

“Then we’ve got to start looking at interventions and supports right at the front line level that start to use root cause analysis and data support that can help people understand what their injury performance is,” he said.

The employee safety conference being held at TCU Place is expected to draw more than 200 delegates from across the province.

According to the SASWH, more than 4,000 workers in the health-care industry were injured on the job in 2011.