Field Study of Community-Based Personal Support Workers Occupational Exposures to Injury Risk Factors

Personal Support Workers (PSWs) provide 70-80% of all paid home care. Unfortunately, they experience occupational injuries at more than twice the rate of the general population. These injuries increase costs for home care providers, reduce the availability of skilled workers, reduce workers quality of life, and impact the consistency of care that can be provided to clients.
This project is part of a larger study to directly measure the physical risk factors for common injuries as PSWs assist with daily activities in clients homes. This internship will focus on understanding how consistent these physical demands are when caring for a given client, and on making data analysis efficient, to improve the efficiency of the overall study. A better understanding of the physical demands of providing home care will allow home care agencies to improve their injury prevention programs and avoid the costs associated with PSW injuries.

Faculty Supervisor:

Jack Callaghan

Student:

Jackie Zehr

Partner:

VHA Home HealthCare

Discipline:

Kinesiology

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Program: