Introduction
In this systematic review, the article used will be “A literature review on global occupational safety and health practice & accidents severity” by Kassu Jilcha and Daniel Kitaw (2016). The negative aspects of developing industrialization and the service sector, such as accidents and chemical, physical, and biological hazards to the employees, call for finding solutions to curb the workforce’s problems during their daily operations. The best intervention for the employees/participants is research that will enhance the comprehensive handling of occupational safety and health issues in a broader perspective compared to focusing only on health issues (Schulte et al., 2017).
The study will solve the work safety issues that have been overlooked in the emerging and rapidly increasing industrialization and service sector. The outcome of the review will provide additional information to future researchers who need to perform further studies by considering ways to bridge the identified gaps. The descriptive study design was used to find the gaps through sections such as methodology, literature review, discussions, and conclusion.
This paper will provide a systematic review of a peer-reviewed article on the global occupational safety and health practice on industrial employees by employing occupational safety and health rather than using health alone. The review’s outcome will provide additional information to future researchers on OSH. The study design to be used in the review will be a descriptive design to provide industry employees (P) with additional safety information (I) to improve the health interventions (C) thus resulting in comprehensive occupational safety and health (O).
Methodology
The search strategy used for the study comprises electronic databases such as CINAHL, LILACS, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PUBMED, EconLit, and Sociological Abstracts. The research eligibility criteria were limited to materials published from the 1980s to 2015 (Jilcha & Kitaw, 2016). However, some basic information was collected from data beyond the provided range interval. The information retrieval mechanism used keywords related to Occupation Safety and Health (OSH) in the global realm (Rantanen et al., 2017).
Some of the vital electronic search words used included industrial safety, industrial health, work safety and quality, and workplace. The study selected articles associated with hazard control approaches, hazard identification, and work safety. Over 1500 manuals, policies, reports, and articles were obtained from the resources through meta-analysis screening to reduce data to the most required and recent publications.
The data collection method involved filtering down the materials and reducing them to 116 articles. Data items were sorted using the participants, interventions, comparisons, outcomes, and study design (PICOS) method focusing on safety and health hazards to identify the current research information and previous study’s drawbacks. The method used in the research to avoid risks of bias related to individual studies informed the guidelines of the research (Jilcha & Kitaw, 2016).
From the research publications received, the study found that several publications on OSH concentrated in recent years. Therefore, the summary measure indicates that the different means of experiencing hazards and accidents at the workplace made OSH an issue of individual concern. The data from the study was handled electronically to avoid the risk of reporting bias within the study.
Results
The research screened 116 articles after assessing them for eligibility. However, several studies were left out based on the content and publication years (Jilcha & Kitaw, 2016). The results also indicate that from each study, data on OSH was extracted by use of PICOS to identify the gaps in the program’s implementation. The research’s risk of bias in the study was limited information from some developing countries, which led to extrapolations. The research results indicate that most countries invested in occupational health, abandoning safety at the workplace. The measure of the consistency of the OSH practices in most countries depended on the funding rate. The study’s risk of bias was that most of them focused on health issues at work and not safety from accidents.
Discussion
The study’s main finding was that occupation safety was given less consideration; therefore, it remains the biggest gap in OSH worldwide. For instance, research in Ethiopia on companies OSH revealed that after identifying workplace accidents and hazards, there were no systematic, integrated models developed to solve workplace safety problems (Jilcha & Kitaw, 2016). Culture, external environment, industry development trends, and economic level were the study’s significant limitations. Therefore, there is a big gap in implementation and information relating to industry employees’ safety.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the research engrossed in global safety conditions in industries in developed and developing nations. World Health Organization is the primary funder of the systematic review supported by the International Labour Organization (ILO), which hosts most global OSH data. The other role in the review was initiating goodwill with international governments to furnish the researchers with information. Therefore, this study adds more information on ensuring workplace safety and health. It emphasizes the consideration of the safety facet of OSH in safeguarding industrial employees.
References
Jilcha, K., & Kitaw, D. (2016). A literature review on global occupational safety and health practice & accidents severity. International Journal for Quality Research, 10(2), 279−310. Web.
Rantanen, J., Lehtinen, S., Valenti, A., & Iavicoli, S. (2017). A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries. BMC Public Health, 17(1), 1−15.
Schulte, P. A., Cunningham, T. R., Nickels, L., Felknor, S., Guerin, R., Check P., Eggerth D., Flynn M., Forrester C., Hard D., Hudson H., Lincoln J., McKernan T. Lauralynn,, Pratap P., Stephenson M. Carol., Van Bogaert D., Blosser, F., Chang, C., … Menger-Ogle, L. (2017). Translation research in occupational safety and health: A proposed framework. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 60(12), 1011−1022. Web.