Impacts of Climate Change on Work Health and Safety in Australia: A Scoping Literature Review.

This scoping review explores the extant literature on climate change impacts on Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) in Australia. It maps the coverage of climate hazards, occupations at risk, and health and socio-economic impacts with the aim of identifying climate change impacts on WHS in Australia and associated knowledge gaps. We used a scoping review approach to identify and investigate 41 scholarly works at the nexus between climate change and WHS in Australia. Thematic template analysis and the NVivo software helped us identify and structure the main themes and systematically document the analysis process. The review highlighted a research focus on the impacts on WHS of heat and extreme weather events resulting from climate change. Agriculture and construction emerged as the most examined occupations, emphasising climate-related diseases and productivity loss. Other climate-related hazards, occupations, and health and socio-economic impacts were largely overlooked in the included research literature. The analysis revealed there is scope for further research relating to climate change impacts on occupational hazards (e.g., air pollution), occupations (e.g., indoor settings at risk), worker health (e.g., injuries), and socio-economic impacts (e.g., change in social practice). Furthermore, the results highlight that the main themes (hazards, occupations, health, and productivity) are interconnected, and the impacts of climate change can be 'cascading', adding complexity and severity. Hence, it is important to look at WHS as a multifaceted phenomenon in a holistic way to understand the risks and support required.

Mental health and well-being impacts of COVID-19 on rural paramedics, police, community nurses and child protection workers.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health and well-being of rural paramedics, police, community nursing and child protection staff. METHOD: An online survey was distributed to investigate the sources of stress and support across individual, task and organisational domains. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: The survey was completed by 1542 paramedics, police, community nurses and child protection workers from all states and territories of Australia. This study describes the data for the 632 rural participants. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The main measures of well-being were the Public Health Questionnaire (PHQ9), the Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD7), the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), workplace engagement, intention to quit and COVID-19-related stress. RESULTS: The mean depression and anxiety scores were 8.2 (PHQ9) and 6.8 (GAD7). This is 2-3 times that found in the general community. Over half (56.1%) of respondents showed high emotional exhaustion (burnout). The emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and personal accomplishment mean scores were 28.5, 9.3 and 34.2, respectively. The strongest associations with burnout and psychological distress were workload, provision of practical support, training and organisational communication. A significant proportion of respondents were seriously considering quitting (27.4%) or looking for a new job with a different employer (28.5%) in the next 12 months. CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 has increased the workload and stress on rural front-line community staff. The major sources of stress were related to organisations' responses to COVID-19 and not COVID-19 per se. The data suggest the most effective mental health interventions are practical and preventive, such as firstly ensuring fair and reasonable workloads.