Health and Mortality in Korean Healthcare Workers

Yoonhee Shin, Ui Jeong Kim, Hye Ah Lee, Eun Jeong Choi, Hyun Jin Park, Hyeong Sik Ahn, Hyesook Park

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: To evaluate the health status of healthcare workers (doctors and nurses) compared to those in the general population based on the National Health Insurance Service database and the cause of death data from Statistics Korea.Methods: The subjects of this study were 104,484 doctors and 220,310 nurses working in healthcare facilities from 2002 to 2017, and who had undergone at least one general medical examination. Based on the subject definition, the subject data were extracted from the National Health Insurance healthcare facility database and qualification database. We collected medical use details included in the research database, general medical examination results, medical history included in the health examination database, and additional data on the cause of death from the National Statistics database to analyze the main cause of death and mortality.Results: In terms of the major causes of death and mortality among healthcare workers, the mortality rate associated with intentional self-harm, injury, transportation accident, heart disease, addiction, and falling was significantly higher than that in the general population. Further, the prevalence of respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases was high. When analyzing the proportional mortality ratio (PMR) by cause of death for healthcare workers, the PMR values for death related to malignant neoplasm was the highest. In terms of diseases, both doctors and nurses had higher rates of infectious diseases such as maternal sepsis, rubella, and measles.Conclusion: The health status of healthcare workers differs from that of the general population. Thus, it is important to consider the occupational characteristics of healthcare personnel.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere22
JournalJournal of Korean Medical Science
Volume37
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences

Keywords

  • Health condition
  • Healthcare worker
  • Korea
  • Mortality
  • Prevalence

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