Cold Water Exposure for Maritime Workers: A Scoping Review

For many of those working in maritime industries, it is very common to be exposed to harsh environments, such as cold water, on a regular basis. We conducted a scoping review on peer reviewed, published papers to summarize the literature on the topic cold water exposure and non-freezing cold water injuries in the maritime industries. First, industry experts were consulted, then a PICO model was created to define the search terms for the review. The initial search produced 690 abstract. Of these abstracts, 14 were considered to be relevant to the review. The scoping review findings illustrated the lack of research that currently exists in relation to cold water exposure in the maritime industries. Within the available, albeit limited, literature, evidence suggests that there are several cold-water injuries that occur in the maritime industries. These include occupational dermatosis, Raynaud’s phenomena, finger blanching, and hand numbness. Performance decrements were also reported. The current gaps include a lack of documentation of minor and non-fatal injuries, the amount of exposure, and training protocols. There is a need to improve cold-water training regulations for those working in the maritime industries and for proper injury documentation, both of which can significantly benefit safety

The Assessment of Medical Gloves for In-Situ Applications

Medical examination gloves are used worldwide and are one of the most common personal protective equipment (PPE) used. The polymers used to develop these gloves undergo rigorous testing to ensure they meet the requirements for use. Primarily, these tests assess the barrier integrity and tensile properties. The effects of placing a membrane over the hand, however, has been shown to be detrimental to the successful performance of tasks carried out by the wearer. The extent of this reduced performance is unknown, but any reduction in tactility and/or dexterity could be disadvantageous to patient care. It could also impact PPE compliance, causing users to remove gloves for certain tasks. As such, this research introduces a range of test methodologies for donning and doffing gloves, as well as assessing how friction is modified with the introduction of contaminants that are encountered when gloves are worn. In order to effectively assess glove performance, the environments gloves encounter, which have received little attention in previous studies, should be carefully considered and replicated as closely as possible. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effects of gloves on users when they are used in-situ Test protocols were developed to cover three key performance areas: donning and doffing, glove contamination, and dexterity. Manual performance tests were set up using readily existing dexterity and sensitivity tests (Purdue pegboard and a simulated tactile (bumps) test). To better understand donning and doffing, friction assessments were conducted to assess the tribological interactions between the skin and the inner surface of glove materials, having undergone different treatments. The friction assessments were repeated for interactions between the outer surface of glove materials and objects with textures that replicated typical hand and tool interactions, both in dry and simulated contamination conditions (water, mucus, blood and other bodily fluids). Three key stages of the donning process were identified (preparation, hand insertion and manipulation), and in all stages, moisture was found to significantly complicate the donning process, as the gloves stuck to the hands more frequently. In wet-hand conditions, polymer coated latex gloves were quicker to don and had lower friction than chlorinated gloves. In addition, nitrile gloves were manufactured specifically for this project, looking at different thicknesses and chlorination treatment strengths. Chlorinating nitrile gloves at 2000ppm appeared to be more beneficial for donning. Doffing was found to be similar regardless of the material, condition, or thickness. The gloves that produced stiffer tensile material samples were found to reduce friction and reduce the dexterity performance of the glove users. When gloves were contaminated, friction was found to be greatly reduced when compared to the dry condition. This reduction in friction was greater for latex, which decreased the gross dexterity and sensitivity of the user. Smaller reductions in friction were observed overall with nitrile, combined with an improvement in dexterity and sensitivity. A synthetic blood was also developed and validated for the tribological properties to circumvent the need for use of animal blood in future friction assessments. Knowledge of which physical properties affect which key performance area is fundamental to manufacturers. Optimising the combination of these properties (within other constraints such as cost, constituent availability, and ecological impact) will improve task performance, increasing user satisfaction, and ultimately, PPE compliance and patient safety

Gathering information rich customer needs for inclusive product design

This work explores a framework for the gathering and analysis of information rich customer needs, with the goal of informing inclusive product design practice. The goal is to be able to provide information and experience to designers so that they can better understand the needs of exceptional users and include those needs in the early stages of design, making inclusive products easier and less expensive to design, produce and use. Human subjects testing is conducted to test a key aspect of the framework – that of a surrogate experience for general users as a valid proxy for eliciting needs similar to an exceptional user set. For this, both users with actual motion restrictions and general users wearing a motion restriction simulation suit (to provide an exceptional user-like experience) are included in this study to provide customer needs for a product set and mobility characterization data. The framework provided by this research enables designers to collect and classify the customer needs produced during elicitation activities, and connect those needs with the users’ functional capabilities and other information, making the needs useful for informing inclusive design. The interconnected data set is used to examine comparisons between user types and experience and other aspects of user functionality to provide evaluations for the surrogate experience. Both the customer needs and their categorizations are examined across multiple dimensions as well as additional connections to user activity and experience. Most importantly, validations of the collection methods and the surrogate experience are performed. The research findings detail how functional capability metrics from the occupational therapy field are added into a motion restriction simulation study to enhance the available data and enable future correlation searches. This dissertation covers the methodology of the selection process for the new metrics along with their implementation into the research procedure and the types of considerations and constraints involved. It provides a detailed description of the motion restriction simulation suit as well as the data collection procedures. This dissertation also includes a discussion of how a recent customer needs ontology is applied to a set of needs gathered for six different manually operated household products. A modification to the original customer needs ontology is proposed and analyzed. The coding of the collected needs sets serves as a validation for the usage and adaptation of the ontology. The different structures and emphases of the ontology as well as ontology code coverage for this particular type of customer need set and products are discussed. Insights on how the ontology can be helpful for future developments are noted results. The overall conclusion is that significant insight into exceptional users is gained, even with the limitations noted in this data set. By identifying so much interconnection, many aspects of niche design can be investigated that support a broader approach to design for exceptional users. That investigation is reported here, and subsequent avenues of investigation are suggested