111 Grouping strategies for exposures to infectious, trauma and psychosocial risks factors among UK police officers and staff
In: Annals of work exposures and health: addressing the cause and control of work-related illness and injury, Band 68, Heft Supplement_1, S. 1-1
ISSN: 2398-7316
Abstract
This study aimed to examine if role and rank were important determinants of exposures to traumatic events and psychosocial risk factors for UK police officers and staff. We used self-reported data on job profile (rank, role), demographics (age, gender) and psychosocial and other risk factors available from 'The Job and Life' 2018 survey of 15,202 UK police officers and staff. Random effect models were used to investigate the explained variability in the reported exposure of: job quality, traumatic experiences, workplace support, working hours, and handling/contact with potentially infectious materials (e.g. bodily fluids) by rank (5 categories), role (10 or 22 categories), gender (3 categories), age (4 categories) and the combination of these variables. Using job role, the explained variance of traumatic experiences, exposure to infectious material and job quality ranged from 10 to 27%, whereas a combined grouping using role, rank and age accounted for >35% of the total variance of work-life balance. Rank was important for working hours, explaining ~49% of the total variance. Gender and age accounted for ≤ 8% of the total variance for all exposures. These findings suggest that among police officers and staff, the role is an important predictor of exposure to psychosocial and infectious risk factors. These results will be used to develop job exposure matrices that can be employed to investigate the link between these risk factors and health outcomes in the AIRWAVE study, which is a longitudinal study of the UK police workforce.