Varianou - Mikellidou, Cleo

Our well-being depends in a way on how well we perform or how well we adapt in our changing personal lives and in our changing work environment. Both factors are important and need to be examined since they are dealing with physiological and psychosocial factors that affecting workers. Nowadays emerging risks such as ageing, feminization, migration, globalization, technical innovation with their multiple dimension, bring changes to the workplace. Thus, in the context of Occupational Health & Safety (OHS), employers are enforced to search for new kinds of preventive measures to protect their workers and business. This PhD thesis is examining one of these emerging risks; ageing. The ageing of the population caused the ageing of the workforce. Ageing is a process rather than a state and individuals might experience it in a different way. Chronological age is not a determinant factor for an individual to understand his/ her health status. Therefore, this heterogenous process is examined, presenting the changes that might occur in psychosocial and physiological way and in regard to OHS. A nationwide study was conducted in Cyprus as a case study of this thesis, aiming to identify factors that affect the performance of the worker, finding that health status is the most important factor and age by itself cannot determine the performance of the worker. Furthermore, the use of Work Individual Performance (WIP) tool and Occupational Health, Safety & Ageing Management System (OHSAMS) are suggested to be used by organisations in order to manage OHS in the context of ageing, aiming to give recommendation measures to employers and work-life balance to employees.

The current COVID-19 crisis has changed our everyday lives almost in every aspect. Many people worldwide have died or hospitalised due to the severe impact of COVID-19 on the vulnerable population, and in particular to the elderly residents of long term care facilities (LTCF). The problem is amplified due to the fact that many of those occupants also suffer from comorbidities (e.g. respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, etc.) and are therefore regarded as a susceptible host to severe COVID-19 disease. Impacts can be felt in the wider societal safety level. The aim of the present study is, therefore, to present the first National multimodal quality and safety improvement strategy plan for the LTCF in the Republic of Cyprus. The current program focused on the intensification of COVID-19 epidemiological surveillance, the promotion of educational training on best practises in infection control and prevention, and the implementation of additional non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), according to the recommendations of ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) and WHO (World Health Organization). This innovative program fostered the interconnectivity and collaboration among the local authorities, academia and the local leaders of the LTCF. In addition, this program reinforced the importance of volunteerism and active participation of medical students in the National initiatives against the COVID-19 pandemic. The effectiveness of the adopted multimodal advanced care-safety planning program is appraised based on the reported new confirmed COVID-19 cases among LTCF healthcare workers and occupants, after the introducing and implementation of the selected NPIs. This multimodal strategy plan seems to be capable of reducing significantly the number of new cases of COVID-19 infections in LTCF and as a result, to also affect the residents’ death number.