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

publish the results of the review in the resources identified by stakeholders(i.e. Professional Safety, Accident Prevention, IWH website).The stakeholders reported that clinical outcomes and measures required byregulation (e.g. OSHA logs, workers’ compensation claims) were moremeaningful to them than employee self-reports of symptoms. Theinformation they wanted the review to provide was, “What was the mosteffective IPC program?”, “What doesn’t work?” and “What is the most costeffectiveprogram?” The stakeholders also asked for the results to bepresented in a tiered manner. This approach would link the program'seffectiveness with the amount of time it took to experience the benefits(reduction in injuries, illnesses or claims). The team made an explicit decisionnot to collect data on cost benefit. The only costs that were included relatedto reporting workers’ compensation information. The team believedeconomic evaluations of programs was an issue related to, but not covered by,the stated questions. In addition, another systematic review describing theeconomic evaluation of programs has recently been completed (9).2.2 Literature SearchSearch terms were identified in three broad areas defined earlier in thissection: injury/illness prevention and loss control (IPC) programs, worker orwork setting and injury/illness outcome terms. Search terms are listed inAppendix D. The specific search terms used were decided by groupconsensus and stakeholder input. The search categories were chosen to beinclusive (IPC and work setting terms) and to be exclusive (injury outcometerms). The search strategy is graphically represented by the Venn diagram inFigure 2.The review team members were asked to assemble a list of articles from theirpersonal libraries that were expected to be captured in the literature search(“must-have” articles). The combined lists were used as a preliminary checkof the search’s face validity. “Must-have” articles identified by the team arelisted in Appendix E. The search would be considered invalid if the groupdetermined the search did not capture the identified relevant articles. Thegroup would then examine the search terms to determine reasons for articleomission. The literature search was completed using the extended keywordlist to ensure capture of relevant articles. The Level 1 review began after thesearch was considered valid.A list of terms was generated a priori that were expected to identify articlesthat were not relevant to the review questions by bringing in non-workplaceliterature. The suspect terms were used in multiple fields and had diversemeanings. The team agreed on terms that should be tested in the search todetermine what impact they had on the number of identified articles. The“stepped” search is a valuable component of describing the literature andhelps identify topic areas for future systematic reviews.A systematic review of injury/illness prevention and loss controlprograms (IPCs)11