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Abstract
Objectives An operations leader (OL) takes an important role in occupational health management for radiation decontamination workers in Japan, and candidates for the position must participate in a training session to acquire the necessary knowledge as required by law. However, it has not been clarified whether the candidates for the OL position actually possess accurate knowledge regarding occupational health management for such work after the training session. We, therefore, aimed at examining the current occupational health management knowledge among the candidates and investigating factors related to the knowledge, with hypothesis that possession of accurate knowledge is associated with prior experience of having worked in radiation decontamination.
Design A cross-sectional study.
Setting The training sessions held by Fukushima Prefecture Labor Standard Associations in Fukushima, Japan, in 2017.
Participants Eighty male candidates participated in the training sessions.
Outcome The number/proportion of correct answers to the questions regarding occupational health management, such as those on working environment management, control of operations and health management.
Results The proportion of those who possessed accurate knowledge regarding working environment management, control of operations and health management was 68.8%, 55.0% and 51.2%, respectively. Experience of radiation decontamination work was associated with the possession of inaccurate knowledge regarding working environment management (OR 0.140 (95% CI 0.042 to 0.464)), and the uncertainty of future radiation decontamination work schedules in difficult-to-return zones was associated with the possession of accurate knowledge regarding health management (OR 4.344 (95% CI 1.509 to 12.50)).
Conclusions Previous experience in radiation decontamination work may hinder the ability to acquire accurate information regarding working environment management among candidates for an OL position. To promote adequate occupational health management for radiation decontamination workers, it is required to establish an effective instructional method for the OL candidate training sessions with consideration of previous relevant experience.
- human resource management
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Footnotes
Contributors TH designed this study, collected and analysed the data, and wrote the manuscript. TKakamu, SE, TS and TKumagai also designed this study and contributed to the analysis. HK, YM, SS and TF critically revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Funding This work was supported by the Fukushima Prefecture Labor Health Center.
Competing interests None declared.
Ethics approval This study was approved by the Ethics Committees of Fukushima Medical University (Application No 3035).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Extra data can be accessed via the Dryad data repository (http://datadryad.org/withthedoi:10.5061/dryad.jc6h257).
Patient consent for publication Not required.