A systematic review of injury/illness prevention and loss control ...

dealt solely with regulatory compliance or fitness for duty were excluded.Surgical interventions among workers with work-related injuries or illnesseswere also excluded.Medical surveillance and screening programs often overlap with IPCs. Thestudies relevant to the review questions were believed to include medicalsurveillance or screening components. Surveillance/screening studies werehandled on a case-by-case basis to determine if IPCs were being evaluated.Surveillance/screening studies that did not link their testing to an IPC or IPCmeasurement tool’s effect on injuries/illnesses or workers’ compensationoutcomes were excluded.Injury/illness outcomesThe primary outcomes were clinical diagnoses of employees, injury/illnessesrates, workers’ compensation claims (rates, duration or costs) or employeeinjury/illness self-reports. Studies that reported near-misses and accidentreporting as sole outcomes were excluded. The focus of this review was onemployee injury/illnesses, and not on accident reporting. Accidents andinjuries are not interchangeable terms. Accidents refer to damage toequipment or facilities, while injuries refer to physical harm incurred bypeople. Workers' compensation and reports required by regulation (i.e.OSHA logs) were included despite the validity and reliability vulnerabilitiesof these data sources because this information was relevant to stakeholders.Injury/illness outcomes were expected to be more directly related tooccupational injury/illness prevention programs, while workers’compensation outcomes were expected to be more related to loss control.Work setting and workersWorkplaces were limited to those locations that employed adults (18 years orolder). Workplaces/workers that were not included in the review wereagricultural workers, migrant workers, tele-workers, home offices/workers,military installations, commercial fishing and workplaces that employed onlythose 17 years old and younger. The workplaces were excluded as the teambelieved these sites were unique and difficult to generalize to otherworkplaces. Laboratory studies were also excluded.Figure 1 depicts the focus of the review in regards to interventions andoutcomes.8 Institute for Work & Health