Factors associated with food workers working while experiencing vomiting or diarrhea

Abstract

This study sought to determine the frequency with which food workers said they had worked while experiencing vomiting or diarrhea, and to identify restaurant and worker characteristics associated with this behavior. We conducted interviews with food workers (n = 491) and their managers (n = 387) in the nine states that participate in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Environmental Health Specialists Network. Restaurant and worker characteristics associated with repeatedly working while experiencing vomiting or diarrhea were analyzed via multivariable regression. Fifty-eight (11.9%) workers said they had worked while suffering vomiting or diarrhea on two or more shifts in the previous year. Factors associated with workers having worked while experiencing vomiting or diarrhea were (i) high volume of meals served, (ii) lack of policies requiring workers to report illness to managers, (iii) lack of on-call workers, (iv) lack of manager experience, and (v) workers of the male gender. Our findings suggest that policies that encourage workers to tell managers when they are ill and that help mitigate pressures to work while ill could reduce the number of food workers who work while experiencing vomiting or diarrhea.

Listening to food workers: Factors that impact proper health and hygiene practice in food service

“…7 This document describes effective management of workers' health and hygiene through a number of practices, including hand washing procedures to reduce and remove foodborne pathogens; requirements for the use and maintenance of gloves and clean outer garments to reduce the transfer of pathogens from workers to food and other objects; and procedures for the identification and restriction of sick workers. 8,9 To ensure that workers follow these practices, restaurants rely predominantly on food safety training. 10,11 While worker training may increase knowledge of proper food safety practices -an important part of food safety control -a number of studies show that food safety training does not ensure that workers actually perform food safety behaviors.…”

Food law compliance in developed and developing countries: Comparing school kitchens in Lincolnshire–UK and Ashanti Region of Ghana

“…The absence of safety policies such as these is a food safety risk as infected staff could contaminate food and cause a wide spread of infection among students and colleagues. Sumner et al (2011) reported of a similar experience in the US where some staff reported to report to work with diarrhoea and vomiting symptoms due to absence of policies for staff to absent themselves when sick. This was different in Lincolnshire where all staff reported they most likely will report possible infections and were given or would be given some time off work to recover and avoid possible food contamination by their matrons.…”

Reported behavior, knowledge and awareness toward the potential for norovirus transmission by food handlers in Dutch catering companies and institutional settings in relation to the prevalence of norovirus

“…As socially desirable results could have been given in the face-to-face interview with a food safety inspector the actual number of food handlers working with GE may be even higher. Other studies reported that 5 per cent of the respondents in the Environmental Health Specialists Network telephone survey among food service workers in restaurants indicated that they had worked while sick with vomiting or diarrhea (Green et al, 2005), whereas in another study, 12 per cent of the interviewed food workers said they had worked while suffering vomiting or diarrhea on two or more shifts in the previous year (Sumner et al, 2011).…”