Search

The restaurant and food service industry in California employs one million workers, largely low-paid, vulnerable workers, including many immigrant and young workers. Ninety percent of these businesses have fewer than 50 employees (half have fewer than 10 employees)1 and often lack the health and safety information and resources typically available to larger businesses.2,3 In addition, the fast-paced nature of restaurant and food service work and the tight profit margins for many small restaurants pose challenges for integrating effective health and safety training. In response to this need, the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation (CHSWC) funded the development of a health and safety training program for owners/managers of small restaurants as part of its Worker Occupational Safety and Health Training and Education Program (WOSHTEP). WOSHTEP is administered by CHSWC in the Department of Industrial Relations through interagency agreements with the Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP) at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Research has indicated that work culture issues, including management's commitment to and employees' engagement in health and safety, may be more important than training per se in actually preventing injuries.4–6 Yet, previously developed educational tools on restaurant health and safety did not provide employers with specific activities to support this approach.7–9 The focus of the Small Business Restaurant Supervisor Safety Training program was to encourage restaurant owners/managers to train their employees in a way that actively engages them in identifying hazards as well as solutions, and demonstrates management's commitment to making the workplace changes that are identified (including physical and work practice changes). To develop the program, LOHP reviewed existing materials, held discussions with owners of small restaurants in an informal focus group, field-tested training activities with workers in several restaurants, and pilot-tested a training workshop for managers and supervisors. Feedback from restaurateurs emphasized that training time is very limited; resources must be brief, user-friendly, and adaptable to their own restaurants; and any materials for employees must also be available in Spanish. As a result, the program's materials included a training guide for two short activities that owners/managers could conduct with their employees: (1) a walk-through or hazard-mapping activity to identify hazards in their workplace, and (2) an activity to encourage employees to generate possible solutions for specific problems using hazard-specific tip sheets. The training packet also contained other resources including a model shoe policy, fact sheets on employing teen workers, and an employee orientation checklist. Several of these resources were adapted from the “Teen-worker Restaurant Safety Program” materials developed previously by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.9 The entire packet was available in both Spanish and English. The training program for the owners/managers consisted of two hours of interactive training that included a demonstration of the hazard-mapping and tip sheet activities. During 2006, in partnership with the California State Compensation Insurance Fund and the California Restaurant Association, trainers from LOHP and LOSH conducted 17 two-hour training workshops for more than 200 restaurant and food service owners/managers. The training program was evaluated at the end of the first year of implementation as part of an independent evaluation of WOSHTEP. The goal of the evaluation was to assess the effects of the program and whether it helped small business managers to (1) conduct effective health and safety training for their employees, (2) involve employees in identifying and addressing workplace hazards, and (3) make changes in the physical workplace and work practices to improve workplace safety. The evaluation was modestly funded as part of a service delivery program and not as a formal research activity. Its primary purpose was to inform program stakeholders and provide a basis to decide whether to modify, abolish, or continue the program. This article summarizes the results of the evaluation.

1. The work of many occupational health nurses involves interaction with labor unions in a range of settings, yet little training is provided to understand unions and their role. 2. Understanding the structure and function of unions can help nurses work more effectively in collaboration with labor toward the common goal of reducing workplace injury and illness. 3. Nurses need to educate union members and leadership to better understand the full range of skills and responsibilities of occupational health nurses.

A case presentation of a newborn infant with intermittent, complete airway obstruction secondary to a pedunculated nasopharyngeal dermoid is presented. The differential diagnosis of obstructing nasopharyngeal lesions of the neonatal period is discussed, and an organized management strategy is proposed.