This study was aimed at revealing the effects of relieving psychological burdens by the use of a newly designed intravenous catheter with a stopping valve for protecting from bleeding during the procedures of inserting the catheter. The use of an intravenous catheter with a stopping valve catheter A) and that of a conventional IV catheter were compared by a questionnaire survey of 536 health care workers and the time motion analysis using video observations and interviews of six infection control practitioners. As a result, 73.0% of the users of the catheter A mentioned that its use was effective for patient safety and 82.3% of them answered that it was useful for improving the quality of care by health care workers. The procedure for keeping peripheral intravenous routes was easier by using the catheter A than that by using a conventional catheter. From the motion analysis, the use of the catheter A reduced the aver age operating time of the non-dominant hand for “pressing” it by 7 sec compared with the use of a conventional catheter. Interestingly, the operation of the non-dominant hand to “release” and “hold” the catheter increased by 2 sec. It was considered that the catheter A with a stopping valve eliminated the need for blood leakage prevention by pressing the vessel, thus securing the flexibility of the non-dominant hand and a margin of the work and reducing anxiety by exposure to contaminated blood. On the other hand, examples of blood leakage after releasing the hemostasis valve due to carelessly forgetting the existence of a stopping valve were also reported. This risk of blood exposure posed by the introduction of new equipment added to the conventional product was also confirmed.

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This study aimed to understand the health conditions of longshoremen and the current status and issues related to safety and health at the ports and harbours. The subjects were 100 longshoremen. With regards to health conditions, a particular focus was placed on mental health issues, and individual tolerance of stress was assessed through the analysis of stress-related genes. According to the results, stress reactions were seen in 27.1% of the subjects, and mild to severe depression was observed in 47.9%. In addition, genetic analysis indicated that there was a high possibility that s/s and s/l genotypes conferred depression. Although a variety of initiatives regarding safety and health were being conducted by the respective companies, mental health issues remained to be resolved by addressing effective mental health measures in the future.

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By means of self-registered questionnaires on Visual display terminal (VDT) work, environment and working postures, visual and musculoskeletal subjective symptoms were surveyed in a university and its affiliated schools. We carried out multiple logistic regression analysis on fatigue of the eyes, shoulder stiffness and lower back pain. Persons surveyed were office workers, university teachers and high school teachers engaged in VDT work, including 321 men and 154 women. As regards the covariates on analysis, 11 terms relevant to VDT work, work environment and working postures were selected by considering multicollinearity among the items in our original interview sheet. Only the working with humped shoulders presented significant odds ratio increases on fatigue of the eyes and shoulder stiffness in both men and women. In addition, changeover of the personal computer (PC) type from a desktop PC to a laptop PC was found to have significant trends for subjective symptom improvement.

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