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Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping

BACKGROUND: Offshore work has been described as demanding and stressful. Despite this, evidence regarding the occupational strain, health, and coping behaviors of workers in the growing offshore wind industry in Germany is still limited. The purpose of our study was to explore offshore wind employee...

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Autores principales: Mette, Janika, Velasco Garrido, Marcial, Harth, Volker, Preisser, Alexandra M., Mache, Stefanie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781334/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29361924
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5079-4
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author Mette, Janika
Velasco Garrido, Marcial
Harth, Volker
Preisser, Alexandra M.
Mache, Stefanie
author_facet Mette, Janika
Velasco Garrido, Marcial
Harth, Volker
Preisser, Alexandra M.
Mache, Stefanie
author_sort Mette, Janika
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Offshore work has been described as demanding and stressful. Despite this, evidence regarding the occupational strain, health, and coping behaviors of workers in the growing offshore wind industry in Germany is still limited. The purpose of our study was to explore offshore wind employees’ perceptions of occupational strain and health, and to investigate their strategies for dealing with the demands of offshore work. METHODS: We conducted 21 semi-structured telephone interviews with employees in the German offshore wind industry. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed in a deductive-inductive approach following Mayring’s qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Workers generally reported good mental and physical health. However, they also stated perceptions of stress at work, fatigue, difficulties detaching from work, and sleeping problems, all to varying extents. In addition, physical health impairment in relation to offshore work, e.g. musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal complaints, was documented. Employees described different strategies for coping with their job demands. The strategies comprised of both problem and emotion-focused approaches, and were classified as either work-related, health-related, or related to seeking social support. CONCLUSIONS: Our study is the first to investigate the occupational strain, health, and coping of workers in the expanding German offshore wind industry. The results offer new insights that can be utilized for future research in this field. In terms of practical implications, the findings suggest that measures should be carried out aimed at reducing occupational strain and health impairment among offshore wind workers. In addition, interventions should be initiated that foster offshore wind workers’ health and empower them to further expand on effective coping strategies at their workplace. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5079-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-57813342018-02-06 Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping Mette, Janika Velasco Garrido, Marcial Harth, Volker Preisser, Alexandra M. Mache, Stefanie BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Offshore work has been described as demanding and stressful. Despite this, evidence regarding the occupational strain, health, and coping behaviors of workers in the growing offshore wind industry in Germany is still limited. The purpose of our study was to explore offshore wind employees’ perceptions of occupational strain and health, and to investigate their strategies for dealing with the demands of offshore work. METHODS: We conducted 21 semi-structured telephone interviews with employees in the German offshore wind industry. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed in a deductive-inductive approach following Mayring’s qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Workers generally reported good mental and physical health. However, they also stated perceptions of stress at work, fatigue, difficulties detaching from work, and sleeping problems, all to varying extents. In addition, physical health impairment in relation to offshore work, e.g. musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal complaints, was documented. Employees described different strategies for coping with their job demands. The strategies comprised of both problem and emotion-focused approaches, and were classified as either work-related, health-related, or related to seeking social support. CONCLUSIONS: Our study is the first to investigate the occupational strain, health, and coping of workers in the expanding German offshore wind industry. The results offer new insights that can be utilized for future research in this field. In terms of practical implications, the findings suggest that measures should be carried out aimed at reducing occupational strain and health impairment among offshore wind workers. In addition, interventions should be initiated that foster offshore wind workers’ health and empower them to further expand on effective coping strategies at their workplace. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5079-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-01-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5781334/ /pubmed/29361924 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5079-4 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mette, Janika
Velasco Garrido, Marcial
Harth, Volker
Preisser, Alexandra M.
Mache, Stefanie
Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping
title Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping
title_full Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping
title_fullStr Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping
title_full_unstemmed Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping
title_short Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping
title_sort healthy offshore workforce? a qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781334/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29361924
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5079-4
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