Priorities of ensuring hygiene and occupational safety of medical personnel and the resilience of healthcare facilities in emergency situations

Abstract

Aim. To evaluate the influence of biological and socio-political emergencies on the safety of healthcare staff members. Materials and methods. The study used bibliosemantic, statistical, and mathematical methods, analyzing official statistical data on the healthcare system state in Ukraine. Results. While performing their functions in healthcare facilities, medical workers are exposed to the risk of negative effects from biological, psychophysiological, chemical, physical, and social harmful and hazardous factors. Adverse occupational factors in hospital environments exert a complex, combined, or concurrent effect, and its impact intensity can be enormously increased in various types of emergency situations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a steep increase in occupational injuries in the national healthcare (in fact, by 30 times) has been documented, including due to the registration of acute infectious diseases among medical personnel at the workplace. Similar trends are also evidenced in indicators of lethal injuries, professional and occupationally induced morbidity. Furthermore, Ukraine has faced overlapping emergency situations of socio-political terms, caused by the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation, and medical-biological problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly complicating the state of affairs. According to official data, only in the first year of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, about 1500 healthcare facilities were damaged, 106 medical workers died, including 33 at their workplace. Conclusions. The resilience of healthcare facilities to various types of emergency situations is an extremely important component of ensuring the hospital environment safety and, as practice shows, requires improvement. There is an urgent need to develop clear response algorithms for healthcare facilities to cope with emergency situations that could influence them. Reinforcing a safety culture in the national medical sector could become the goal and foundation for future strategies to create a safe hospital environment by improving and enhancing the safety culture.