One of my goals in doing these weekly team reports has been to try out new
search engines. This week I decided to try out Power
Search. Under the urging of Dr. James I did a search on "Safety
[and] Risk [and] Behaviors [and]
Job", and I allowed the search to be "anywhere" on the page. The search engine
was very fast (which I found impressive) in coming up with 176 links. Each
link was numbered and began with the actual link, then on the next line was the
link address, and then one the next line a very brief synopsis of the link. At
the bottom of the synopsis was the option of visit the page, find matches on
the page, or find similar pages. This search seemed very promising at first,
given all these possibilities. Unfortunately, as I started going through the
links, I became extremely discouraged because most of the articles that Power
Search found for me had very little to do with my topic of interest. I think
the fact that I let the search be "anywhere" on the page had a lot to do with
my disappointment. I did, however, find one good link having to do with safety
and risk behaviors on the job:
In this report the Commission seeks to provide general guidance in the form of
enduring principles as well as specific recommendations. Major topics
include:
I. Principles for Evaluating Proposals to Reduce the Risk of Transmission of
Bloodborne Infections in Health Care Settings.
II. Historical Background -- this sections talks about the risks to health
care providers, as well as shifting the focus of risk to the patient.
III. Identifying and Minimizing Risk in Health Care Settings -- sources of
risk to the health care workers are identified as being accidental puncture
from a needle due to improper disposure, and to a much lesser extent, blood to
mucous-membrane contact; the sources of risk to patients is identified as being
either the health care provider bleeding into a patient's wound, or a needle
accidentally puncturing the worker and then puncturing the patient.
IV. HIV Antibody Testing and Restrictions on Health Care Workers Performing
Invasive Procedures
V. Disclosing HIV Status to Prospective Patients
VI. Guidance for health care workers at risk for HIV infection -- this
sections talks about the need for workers to undergo voluntary testing
VII. Protecting Rights of HIV-infected Health Care Workers
VIII. CDC Guidelines
This document was incredibly long, but very comprehensive. If you are a health
care provider at risk, you might want to brave the verbosity of words and
trudge through the document. But I must say, as a phlebotomist, even though I
felt the information was important for me to read, if I wasn't doing this for a
class, I don't think I would have sat and read the document. This is important
information that is being disseminated, but to make it more accessible to the
common health care provider, the information should be abbreviated and
presented in a more user-friendly manner.
After this first
disappointing search, I decided to try another search on
"Safety [or] Risk [or] Behavior" in the Title only. This search proved to be
much more fruitful and I came across several interesting articles:
-- This was just the homepage of
this organization and mainly talked about the mission of the center and what
the center is involved with.
-- If you are interested in affordable, high quality
health and safety products, you might wanna check out this link. They list and
describe all their safety products and what each product does. At the end of
the page there's a link to pre-submit your order (whatever that means).
-- From what I gather, this is
the homepage of a company that deals with occupational safety and I guess you
can write to them with your concerns about safety on the job. They had and
interesting link to the National Institute
of
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The responsibilities of this organization
include: (a)Investigating potentially hazardous working conditions, (b)
Evaluating hazards in the workplace, (c) Creating and disseminating methods for
preventing disease, injury, and disability, and (d) Conducting research and
providing scientifically valid recommendations for protecting workers. The
homepage mainly listed other related links to things such as NIOSH Activities in the
50 States, NIOSH Database Information, and NIOSH Publications. If you are further interested in this topic, you might want
to check out Other
Related Web
Sites.
Trucking, Driver Safety, Automobiles, Surviving around Big Rigs/
-- Finally, for those of
you in traffic psychology, here's a link about safety on the road. This page
is divided into two main topics, Trucking/Automobile
Driver Safety and Fun
Stuff. I must say, this homepage is the most aesthetically pleasing
of the ones I've listed here today. He used different backgrounds, icons, and
text, link, and vlink colors. I think the reason that this one is so much
nicer is because the other pages were published by organizations while this
page seems to be published by an individual, a trucker who happens to have his
own homepage. The Fun Stuff portion was very interesting to say the very
least. Let me just say that I am still baffled about it.
I am in conflict about
what I found for this week's team report as far as
their relation to social psychology. While most of what I have found up to now
has served the purpose of relating information to the public, I wasn't
satisfied the this week's links were relating information. The first link
about preventing HIV transmission in health care settings was very informative
and served the purpose of sharing information with the public, but the other
links, I felt were merely free advertising for these organizations. I didn't
feel that they were useful to my knowledge, but rather, merely there to let us,
the public, know that they exist. I suppose the internet is a source of free
advertising, but until this week, I never thought of it as that. The scope of
impact that the internet has on the world is now becoming more apparent to me
as my eyes are opened to what the internet can be used for and its ability to
touch so many people. Cerebrally, I knew this already, but I never
realized it until this week when I saw how these organizations can use
the internet to let people know that they exist and what they're about. All I
can say for right now is that I am awestruck.
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