The Occupational Health Safety Network (OHSN) is a free and voluntary system that healthcare organizations and facilities can join to improve their workplace safety and health. OHSN uses existing injury data among healthcare personnel to help identify job titles at highest risk for injury, develop interventions, and objectively measure impact.

OHSN has three existing modules that track incidences of slips, trips, and falls, patient handling injuries, and workplace violence. This year, OHSN offers two new modules: sharps injury and blood and body fluid exposure. These are five common, high risk, preventable injury and exposure events among healthcare workers.

Participating hospitals that voluntarily provide information to OHSN become part of a network that analyzes and reports workplace-specific data to illustrate the magnitude of injury and illness events among workers, monitors the trends, gains access to a library of resources specific to the healthcare sector, and shares lessons learned.  OHSN data characterize first, the occupation of the injured worker; second, the type, severity, cause and location of the injury; and finally, information useful in determining how the injury could be prevented in the future. More and more hospitals are using OHSN to analyze their data in minute detail, user-friendly and visually appealing graphs and charts, and to monitor patterns of injuries (e.g., types of healthcare personnel involved, risk factors, circumstances causing injuries), while identifying the most promising prevention strategies.

NIOSH encourages healthcare facilities to enroll in the OHSN and participate in a system that assists with and drives the development of occupational safety and health implementation strategies, keeping healthcare workers safe and healthy on the job in a direct and efficient way.

For more information OHSN, please visit the OHSN topic page. Follow this link to begin the enrollment process.