Top 10 Things Every Radiologist Needs to Know About Intimate Partner Violence

Introduction: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is considered to be the leading cause of nonfatal injury to women worldwide. Moreover, the need for effective training for health care professionals (HCPs) and protocol for addressing IPV in health care contexts are well-documented. This article addresses key questions that radiologists may have related to supporting patients who have experienced IPV. Methods: Peer-reviewed journal articles and other formal reports were located using Google Scholar and PubMed in order to assemble this review. Conclusions: Radiologists are well-equipped to help identify possible instances of IPV if they are aware of the injury patterns commonly associated with IPV. Along with other HCPs, radiologists can also advocate for the implementation of protocols that will guide their responses to victims of IPV within their own health care institution.

Before-and-After Empirical Bayes Evaluation of Achieving Bare Pavement using Anti-Icing on Urban Roads

Canadian municipalities are increasingly choosing to achieve bare pavement (BP) for snow and ice control during fall/winter seasons. When a snowstorm event is forecasted, one strategy is to apply anti-icing chemicals to the pavement surface to prevent the snow and ice from forming a bond with the road surface. Such an approach facilitates a more efficient plowing operation and reduces the amount of deicing chemicals needed to achieve BP. This study assesses the safety performance of achieving BP using anti-icing compared with the traditional reactive winter road maintenance (WRM) approach on urban roads using the before-and-after Empirical Bayes technique. Results suggest that achieving BP significantly reduces all collision types and severities on midblocks with a reduction value in the range of 13.7% to 19.7%. Attaining BP at intersections was found to be very effective in reducing injury collisions with an estimated reduction of 12.5%. When sites were grouped based on a WRM priority-basis, it was found that anti-icing was effective for reducing the majority of collision types and severities at the different priority levels with reductions ranging from 8.7% to 49.83% on midblocks and between 5.37% and 13% at intersections. All reductions were statistically significant. The monetary benefits of the reductions in property-damage only and nonfatal injury collisions were estimated at 60 million Canadian dollars using a 1.92% interest rate and a 2-year service life. These findings provide unequivocal evidence that achieving BP using anti-icing can lead to significant societal safety benefits that economically translate to huge collision cost savings.

Why Slips, Trips, and Falls Are Still A Problem: A Hazard Assessment At Surface Mines

Slips, trips, and falls (STF) contribute significantly to nonfatal incidents at surface mines. Although fall fatalities and STF from mobile equipment have been investigated, nonfatal incidents and STF hazards encountered at mines are not well documented. This paper aims to identify occupations and activities associated with nonfatal STF incidents at surface stone, sand, and gravel mines, document through a systematic observation the STF hazards encountered, and corroborate the findings of the hazard assessment using an analysis of nonfatal injury narratives reported in the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) injury database. Mobile equipment operators, laborers/utility men, and mechanics were most often involved in nonfatal STF incidents. Walking/running, getting on/off equipment, machine maintenance and repair, and handling supplies and materials accounted for over 80% of the activities being performed at the time of the incident. Solid debris, in the form of rocks and stones on unpaved surfaces and material accumulation on paved surfaces, and liquid contaminants, primarily pooled water, were common hazards identified during the systematic observation. Stair tread issues and transitions to and from ladders were also identified as hazards. These findings were in line with injury data where rocks, ice/snow, uneven ground, water, hoses, mud, and loose/unstable material were the most common contaminants and hazards encountered at the time of the incident. In addition, several recommendations are provided to help eliminate or remediate the identified hazards.

easyBLS, a Tool for Querying Nonfatal Injury Information from United States Bureau of Labor Statistics Database

Every year, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects and publishes important information on the number and types of occupational injuries and illnesses affecting workers across all industries. Researchers, occupational safety and health professionals, epidemiologists and industry groups rely on this data to make conclusions about past, present, and future injury and illness trends. The data are also very important in determining the root causes of workplace injury and developing effective interventions. The BLS provides two web tools to query nonfatal injury data from the database. However, one of the tools is no longer functioning, while the other has relatively low query efficiency (more than twenty seconds per query) as tested in this study. Furthermore, there is no data visualization tool provided to help display the queried information. easyBLS (Desktop and web version) was developed to query information from the BLS database with relatively high efficiency (less than one second per query). This tool also provides two data visualization tools (line graph and map) to help users to better interpret the queried information. easyBLS web version is available to the public at http://easybls.pythonanywhere.com/ .