Risk Factors Affecting Occupational Accidents and Related Causes: Case Study

Electricity is considered as the fifth cause of occupational deaths. Occupational accidents caused by electricity do not form a high percentage of total occupational accidents, but are considered due to the severity of injuries which often result in death. The present study aimed to investigate the factors affecting occupational accidents among employees of a power distribution company in Khuzestan province.

The present study was a descriptive-analytical study which conducted as cross-sectional on the files related to the accidents of the personnel of a company in 2017.  Inclusion criteria were a history of accidents during the last 5 years from 2013 to 2017. Thus, all the personnel files of the employees of the company were reviewed and a number of 92 files of the personnel who were injured during the above-mentioned years were extracted. The required information such as demographic information (age, marital status, education level), organizational information of the injured person (employment status, job title), type of injury and place of injury on the body, rate of accidents in different seasons, days, and hours were recorded on a specific worksheet in the files. SPSS software version 22 was used for analyzing the factors affecting occupational accidents using descriptive tests and chi-square test. Significance level was considered as 0.05.

The maximum number of accidents occurred in summer during 8 to 10 am and the age group of 25 to 29 years reported the highest number of fatalities. In addition, most accidents occurred in the occupational group having a job experience of 1 to 5 years.

Human errors and non- use of personal protective equipment, deficit of equipment and supervision, as well as the failure in implementing technical and safety instructions were the most critical causes of accidents and the actions such as technical and safety training before starting the work were evaluated as effective measures in controlling accidents.