Is working in healthcare bad for your health?
A recent survey found that 19% of medical workers said that their jobs “have a bad impact on their overall health,” putting them fourth behind workers in retail, construction and outdoor work, factories and manufacturing.
The poll from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health and NPR shined a light on the dangers and stresses on workers, including those in the medical field.
According to the survey, medical workers are the second most likely to face potentially dangerous situations at work, with 58% of those respondents saying they faced such circumstances sometimes or often. Only construction and outdoor workers surpassed that report, with 76% acknowledging they often face potentially dangerous situations at their jobs.
All in all, 44% of working adults say their job impacts their overall health and only 1 in 4 of those say it positively affects their health. Approximately 43% of the 1,600 poll respondents said their jobs have a negative impact on their stress level, with smaller groups claiming it also hurt their eating and sleeping habits.
“The takeaway here is that job No. 1 for U.S. employers is to reduce stress in the workplace,” said Robert Blendon, a Harvard public health professor who directed the survey.
