Assisting Occupational Therapists in North Dakota: An Agricultural Resource Guide

Within the state of North Dakota, agriculture and farming are of the most essential and influential factors within the state\u27s economy (Rathge et. al 2012). Rural communities are among the medically under-served areas within the United States; establishing the dire need of healthcare services (Hagglund et al., 1998; Schweitzer et al., 2011). A study conducted by Meyer and Fetsch (2006) deduced the four prominent disabilities affecting farmer\u27s engagement in occupations as arthritis, spinal cord injury, amputation, and back injuries. Farmers, and their family members, are also at higher risk for work related stressors which may result in severely disabling conditions; which overall establishes an even greater need to provide services to this population (Schweitzer et al., 2011). In addition, Willkomm (2001) reviewed the difficulties farmers with disabilities encounter and the increased risks for secondary injury. A literature review was conducted to identify areas of need for farmers; the performance skills and client factors potentially impacted by injury, and best practice assessments and interventions. Based on the results of the literature, a concise manual entitled An Agricultural Resource Guide for Occupational Therapists was developed. This resource guide is designed for occupational therapists to utilize when working with this population. It contains a review of assessments and intervention strategies to utilize with farmers within his or her context based on the Ecological Model and encompassing the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework. An Ecological Model perspective is utilized to consider the farmer and tasks within the natural work and home environment. Components from the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework were utilized throughout the manual to provide organization of multiple client factors and performance skills required by farmers to complete tasks. North Dakota is a state dominated by agriculture; as such, it is essential to understand the population’s physical, mental, social, cultural, and temporal constraints. The is purpose of this project was to ensure that the needs of the farmer and family are being met and allow the farmer to remain active within the profession for as long as he/she so chooses

The Journal of ERW and Mine Action Issue 11.2 (2008)

Focus: The Middle East and North Africa } Feature: The Environmental Impact of Demining | Notes from the Field | Research and Developmen

Harvest of hazards the farm safety movement, 1940-1975

Between 1940 and 1975, farmers chose to adopt new machines, different farming methods and ever-widening array of chemicals all of which presented unfamiliar hazards. Farm Families had always been exposed risks from hand-tools, domestic animals and inclement weather, however, potential health risks multiplied in the mid twentieth century. Farmers could be injured in a myriad of ways in their attempt to grow crops, raise livestock or even in bringing their commodities to market. An individual\u27s clothing or limbs could become entangled in a machine\u27s unguarded moving parts, a tractor driver might be crushed during an accidental overturn and person carelessly applying chemicals could experience a disabling injury or even death;Farm families were particularly vulnerable to accidental injury or death due to the unique their profession\u27s unique aspects. Such factors as farming\u27s entrepreneurial nature and the general lack of regulatory protections greatly contributed to agricultural work\u27s hazardous nature. The fact that people of diverse ages and skill levels routinely labored on the nation\u27s farm further also added to the issue\u27s complexity. Such aspects of the farm safety problem persisted throughout the era despite the existence of a movement to reduce the dangers associated with farming;Farm safety specialists, National Safety Council (NSC) representatives as well as leaders of many other organizations cooperated in launching and sustaining an effort throughout the period. In the 1940s, the farm safety movement\u27s development was greatly aided by heightened accident prevention concerns created by technological change as well as the desire to conserve labor during wartime. Farm safety supporters transformed an effort which had been piecemeal and feeble into a highly coordinated, energetic and national effort by the decade\u27s close. Safety advocates primarily devoted their energies on educational campaigns delivered by state extension employees, agricultural youth groups, and other farm oriented organizations. Despite this initial cooperative atmosphere, by the early 1960s, agricultural and safety leaders who labored to improve safety worked in a more contentious environment as a result of the controversial legislation, institutional struggles, and new legal understandings of accident culpability

Utilizing the Land-Based Learning Model for the Clemson Agricultural Safety, Growing Safe Tigers Program

The Clemson Agricultural Safety, Growing Safe Tigers program was developed in 2019 with the goal of increasing the awareness of agricultural safety in South Carolina. By utilizing the land-based learning model, a need for agricultural safety education was identified through incident surveillance strategies. Agricultural incidents were quantified using AgInjuryNews.org and recommendations were made for the program to provide more tailored information to the four regions of South Carolina, based on the primary cause of incident for each region. Educators’ understanding of place and interconnected systems was determined pertaining to agricultural safety to provide a baseline for how agricultural education teachers in South Carolina utilize resources. With one focus group, 22 agricultural educators provided the program with information regarding their competencies and current needs to allow them to better educate youth about agricultural safety. Recommendations, based on themes, were provided to the program on curricular improvement to best aid agricultural educators in teaching agricultural safety. Intervention was achieved through the program’s field days. Four regular field days were hosted, along with one condensed field day. Regular field days were held at Clemson University Research and Education Centers (RECs), and the condensed field day was held on Clemson University’s main campus. A total of 365 students ages 14-18 attended the regular field days and 113 students attended the condensed field day. At all field days, pre and post-tests were administered to the students to gauge their agricultural safety knowledge that was gained during the field day. A total of 127 students completed both the pre and post-test at the regular field days. Three out of the four regular field days produced post-test means with statistically significant differences. The condensed field day produced 27 completed pre and post-tests with statistically significant differences between the pre-test and post-test means. By implementing an adaptation of the land-based learning model to identify the program as the partner for SBAE programs, including their agricultural education students and teachers, a better understanding of curriculum updates, educational strategies, and place-based needs can be developed to continue to increase awareness of agricultural safety

A Farm Management Information System With Task-Specific, Collaborative Mobile Apps And Cloud Storage Services

Modern production agriculture is beginning to advance beyond deterministic, scheduled operations between relatively few people to larger scale, information-driven efficiency in order to respond to the challenges of field variability and meet the needs of a growing population. Since no two farms are the same with respect to information and management structure, a specialized farm management information system (FMIS) which is tailored to the realities on the ground of individual farms is likely to be more effective than generalized FMIS available today. This thesis presents the design of a FMIS using proven user-centered design principles. This approach resulted in the creation of the OpenAgToolkit (OpenATK), and a suite of task-specific, collaborative Android apps. The OpenATK system architecture enabled apps to share data between apps on a device with shared local databases, and across devices on the farm using Trello application programming interface (API). Five Android apps, Rock App, Tillage App, Trello Sync App, Field Notebook App, and Planting App, were developed in the proposed architecture. Other apps such as the Anhydrous App, and Spraying App were discussed with respect to their role in the OpenATK FMIS. The OpenATK approach proved to be technically viable with current, consumer-grade technologies including free cloud storage, Wi-Fi, and task-specific, collaborative Android apps running on tablet devices. The Tillage and Trello Sync Apps were used to generate artificial records for one year on a 404 ha (1,000 acre) farm to evaluate data storage needs. The total amount of data generated for the six field operations on the 13 fields was 260 kilobytes. Four OpenATK Apps were evaluated individually by four evaluators using the personal interview procedure for interface usability. The heuristic evaluation method was an appropriate evaluation method for the goals of this project as it enabled the observer to easily identify two critical interface usability problems: the long-hold method to move rock marker icons on the map and the method to draw field boundaries. Solutions to improve the usability problems were proposed, and recommendations were given for future research

Use of workers' compensation data for occupational safety and health: proceedings from June 2012 workshop

The purpose for the June 2012 Use of Workers' Compensation Data for Occupational Safety and Health Workshop was to explore ways in which workers' compensation information can be used for public health research and surveillance. Thirty-five poster and platform presentations described studies that utilized workers' compensation information while exploring limitations of these resources. The workshop proceedings contain summary articles for the presentations plus notes from the discussion groups for the 6 white papers that were drafted for the workshop. The workshop was co-sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions (IAIABC), National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, Safety and Health Assessment for Research and Prevention (SHARP) program.Introduction -- Acknowledgements -- Use of workers' compensation for occupational safety and health: opening remarks -- The advantages of combining workers' compensation data with other employee databases for surveillance of occupational injuries and illnesses in hospital workers -- Safe lifting in long-term care facilities, workers' compensation savings and resident well-being -- Workers' compensation versus safety data use at the veterans health administration: uses and weaknesses -- Linking workers' compensation data and earnings data to estimate the economic consequences of workplace injuries -- Workers' compensation costs in wholesale and retail trade sectors -- Linking workers' compensation and group health insurance data to examine the impact of occupational injury on workers' and their family members' health care use and costs: two case studies -- Occupational amputations in illinois: data linkage to target interventions -- The role of professional employer organizations in workers compensation: evidence of workplace safety and reporting -- Using workers' compensation data to conduct OHS surveillance of temporary workers in Washington state -- How WorkSafeBC uses workers' compensation data for loss prevention -- Hitting the mark: improving effectiveness of high hazard industry interventions by modifying identification and targeting methodology -- Injury trends in the Ohio Workers' Compensation System -- Randomized government safety inspections reduce worker injuries with no detectable job loss -- Comparison of data sources for the surveillance of work injury -- OSHA recordkeeping practices and workers compensation claims in Washington; results from a survey of Washington BLS respondents -- Completeness of workers' compensation data in identifying work-related injuries -- Another method for comparing injury data from workers compensation and survey sources -- Using O*Net to study the relationship between psychosocial characteristics of the job and workers' compensation claims outcomes -- Impact of differential injury reporting on the estimation of the total number of work-related amputation injuries -- Exploring New Hampshire workers' compensation data for its utility in enhancing the state's occupational health surveillance system -- Using workers' compensation data for surveillance of occupational injuries and illnesses-Ohio, 2005-2009 -- Using an administrative workers' compensation claims database for occupational health surveillance in California: validation of a case classification scheme for amputations -- Describing agricultural occupational injury in Ohio using Bureau of Workers' Compensation claims -- Use of multiple data sources to enumerate work-related amputations in Massachusetts: the contribution of workers' compensation records -- Workers' compensation-related CSTE occupational health indicators -- The effectiveness of the Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP) in reducing the frequency and cost of workers' compensation claims -- Comparison of cost valuation methods for workers compensation data -- Development and evaluation of an auto-coding model for coding unstructured text data among workers' compensation claims -- Patterns in employees' compensation appeals board decisions: exploratory text mining and information extraction -- Identifying workers' compensation as the expected payer in emergency department medical records -- Utilizing workers' compensation data to evaluate interventions and develop business cases -- gender, age, and risk of injury in the workplace -- The mystery of more Monday soft-tissue injury claims -- Is occupational injury risk higher at new firms? -- Discussion of: Successes using workers' compensation data for health care injury prevention: surveillance, design, costs, and accuracy -- Discussion of: The total burden of work-related injuries and illnesses: a draft white paper developed for the workshop on the use of workers' compensation data -- Discussion of: Workers' compensation loss prevention: a white paper for discussion -- Discussion of: Contingent workers: data analysis limitations and strategies -- Discussion of: Using workers' compensation administrative data to analyze injury rates: a sample study with the Wisconsin Workers' Compensation Division -- Discussion of: The Role of leading indicators in the surveillance of occupational health and safety -- Final workshop discussion group -- State health agencies' access to state workers' compensation data: results of an assessment conducted by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, 2012 -- Workshop participants -- Workshop agenda -- Poster presentations.David F. Utterback and Teresa M. Schnorr, editors.May 2013.Also available via the World Wide Web as an Acrobat .pdf file (11.9 MB, 232 p.).Includes bibliographical references

DESIGNING AND TESTING A COMPREHENSIVE FALL PREVENTION PROGRAM WITH MASTERY OUTCOMES: A CASE STUDY

Existing research demonstrates the usefulness of multi-factorial approaches to the challenge of patient fall prevention (Spoelstra, Given, & Given, 2012; Wexler, D’Amico, & Rolston, 2011; Hart-Hughes, Quigley, Tatjana, & Scott, 2004). Some of the current strategies include assessment of a patient’s risk for falling based on a valid assessment instrument, management of a patient’s environment to provide a safe space, medication monitoring and management to avoid use of medications that could lead to falls, patient teaching, post-incident evaluation, and more. Implementation of these strategies is dependent upon patient care employees including nurses, nursing assistants, and physical therapists. Instructional systems design models provide an approach to addressing the problem of awareness of patient fall prevention opportunities with instruction through assessment of the specific circumstances of the hospital environment and learner needs, design of interventions to address the identified needs, development and implementation of an educational plan, and evaluation of the effectiveness of the implemented interventions (Dick & Carey 1990; Morrison, Ross, & Kemp, 2004). The model is easily likened to that of the nursing process involving assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating to achieve holistic caring for individuals or groups of patients. In the case of this study, the models are applied to addressing the identified instructional needs of hospital staff in order to influence change in their knowledge and behaviors related to fall prevention and to decrease the incidence of falls in the hospital environment. In this case study research, from 2015-17, 1,126 employees at a large urban hospital were trained using a fall prevention program entitled “Reducing Inpatient Falls Using an Evidence-Based Practice Approach” as part of the hospital site’s fall prevention program. The training combined an innovative user-tested narrative simulation with fall-prevention informative instruction. There were three cohorts of repeat users (as the fall prevention program is required each year). Cohorts were defined by their performance levels on a criterion referenced fall prevention knowledge test, based on the content of the simulation and informative content. Using a mastery scoring approach, trainees needed to achieve a score of 85% or higher on the knowledge test. To achieve mastery a trainee could 1) retake the simulation or 2) upon a second failure to master, was provided didactic training and another (different) commensurate simulation on fall prevention. The study analysis focuses on the performance of the three cohorts (high, medium, and low performing groups) over time. The findings suggest among high initial performers who achieve mastery, there was evidence of high retention of fall prevention content and increased mastery scores over subsequent annual trainings. The hospital site documented an actual 30.6% reduction of patient falls over the study years, from a mean of 3.46 to 2.40 patient falls per 1,000 patient days

An Occupational Therapy Guide to Assessment of Executive Function of Rural Agriculture Workers

Purpose: Develop a guide for occupational therapists working with rural agricultural-based individuals’ experiencing cognitive deficits. Methodology: A comprehensive literature review was completed with major topics including the definition of executive functioning, common duties of ranch/farm workers, relationship between executive functioning and work, rural agriculture culture. The goal of the literature review was to gain an understanding of the influence of executive functioning skills on engagement within occupational duties and tasks of rural agriculture workers. Results: An occupational therapy guide was developed to provide a list of common tasks/duties of ranchers/framers and the associated executive functioning skills as well as client factors. The guide intends to assist therapists in assessing executive functioning deficits in common duties/tasks of the rural agriculture worker in order to provide a more occupation-based evaluation. Conclusions: The occupational therapist’s assessment and intervention of executive functioning skills for ranch and/or farm workers should be directed by The Occupational Therapy Guide to Assessment of Executive Functioning of Rural Agricultural Workers to foster client-centered practice which meets the occupational performance needs of the individual

Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook

The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff in addressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations. The Sourcebook aims to deliver practical advice, guidelines, principles, and descriptions and illustrations of approaches that have worked so far to achieve the goal of effective gender mainstreaming in the agricultural operations of development agencies. It captures and expands the main messages of the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development and is considered an important tool to facilitate the operationalization and implementation of the report's key principles on gender equality and women's empowerment