Publication Date

Spring 2018

Degree Type

Doctoral Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Richard Keegan

Second Advisor

Asha Weinstein Agrawal

Third Advisor

Troy Manchester

Keywords

Occupational injuries, Commute, SF Bay Area, Assembly workers

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to better understand the potential negative impact of longer commute times on work-related health complaints and its relationship with frequency of work-related injuries among general assembly workers from various factories in the Bay Area. Companies in the United States seek to reduce the cost of work-related injuries by investigating the causes of and implementing necessary programs in their workplaces. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 115,000 employees who spend more than 90 minutes commuting to their jobs in the San Francisco Bay and San Jose Silicon Valley areas (2013). However, there are no studies in the Bay Area that address potential correlation of work-related injuries and commute time. The targeted population for this study is general assembly workers in the Bay Area who are clients at Access Omnicare, an occupational clinic in Fremont, CA. The study included a survey, Hege Eriksen's Subjective Health Complaints (SHC) Inventory. The SHC Inventory was used to measure outcome variables such as symptoms of musculoskeletal, psychological, and gastrointestinal disorders. Moreover, clients' demographic data were collected to examine how their exposure variables such as age, length of, and method of commute, and years of employment, are associated with the outcome variables. The methods of analysis applied were multiple regression and linear regression. The results revealed that female assembly workers reported increased number of work-related injuries and that length of employment and musculoskeletal complaints may be the predictor variables for occupational injuries. Moreover, each subscale from SCH showed a relationship to the number of occupational injuries in 1 year. Although the length or mode of commute did not show correlation with occupational injuries; the majority of participants stated that they believe that longer commutes cause harm in their health. It is hoped that this project will encourage other researchers and various factories in the Bay Area to develop programs and policies that better support the assembly workers and decrease the frequency of occupational injuries.

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.