Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Research Article

Social Support in the Workplace and Work-related Injury in Canada: A Cross-sectional Analysis

¹Department of Public Health Sciences, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

²Department of Health Sciences, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

*Corresponding Author:

Afshin Vafaei
Department of Public Health Sciences
Queen’s University
Carruthers Hall 2nd floor
Kingston, K7L 3N6, ON, Canada
Tel: 1-416-561-2919
E-mail: 5av14@queensu.ca

Received date: July 23, 2013; Accepted date: September 17, 2013; Published date: September 24, 2013

Citation: Vafaei A, Kristman VL (2013) Social Support in the Workplace and Workrelated Injury in Canada: A Cross-sectional Analysis. Occup Med Health Aff 1:131. doi: 10.4172/2329-6879.1000131

Copyright: © 2013 Vafaei A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Objective: To determine the associations between social support at work and work-related injuries. Methods: Canadian Community Health Survey data were used to measure repetitive strain injury and most serious injuries among respondents working in the past year. High, medium, or low workplace social support was determined by responses to questions about workplace conflict, supervisor and co-worker helpfulness. Results: Both males and females reporting high social support were less likely to report a work-related repetitive strain injury (female odds ratio = 0.45; 95% CI= 0.32-0.63; male odds ratio = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.43-0.96). Workplace social support was not associated with the most serious injury. Conclusions: We found an association between workplace social support and repetitive strain injury at work. Future studies need to examine this association prospectively to establish the causality of the association.

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