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Many understand that cardiac arrest is a serious problem involving the heart, but most don’t know the specifics of the subject, just what a killer it can be, or how to respond when it occurs in the workplace.

Quick Facts about Cardiac Arrest. Cardiac arrest is when the pump function of the heart suddenly stops. Ventricular fibrillation, also called V-fib, is where the lower chambers of the heart quiver instead of normally contracting. Pulseless ventricular tachycardia involves an extremely fast heartbeat, but without effective cardiac output in the lower chambers of the heart and no effective pulse. These irregular heart rhythms can cause the heart to suddenly stop pumping blood out to the rest of the body. The most common cause of a sudden cardiac arrest is a heart attack involving either of the above irregular heart rhythms. Bradycardia, which is a slow heartbeat, accounts for a small number of cardiac arrests.

The causative factors are vast, including illegal drugs and certain prescription medications, respiratory arrest, drowning, trauma, choking, and electrocution. A previous diagnosis of heart disease may or may not exist. Sometimes a cardiac arrest occurs without any apparent causative agent.

Someone suffering a cardiac arrest will suddenly collapse, be unresponsive to verbal stimuli and gentle shaking, and cease to breathe normally. The person will also have an absent pulse, but those not medically trained should look for signs of circulation (normal breathing, coughing, twitching, movement, and improved color) instead of checking for a pulse.

Once the heart fails to pump blood to the rest of the body, it only takes four to six minutes for brain damage to begin. Without immediate appropriate treatment, the victim can die within minutes. It’s estimated that 95% cardiac arrest victims die before they ever reach the hospital.

Chance of survival is decreased by seven to ten percent per minute of delay until defibrillation, when CPR isn’t performed. The sudden cardiac arrest survival rate is 48-74% when CPR is immediately initiated and defibrillation takes place within three to five minutes.

Should You Have An Automatic External Defibrillator? Automatic External Defibrillators (AED) have become commonplace in schools, casinos, and airports. Knowing the above facts, employers should definitely consider having an AED as part of their workplace safety program. After the electrodes are applied to the victim’s chest, the device evaluates cardiac wave patterns. If the machine finds an abnormality, such as ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia, it sends an electric shock to the heart to return it to a normal rhythm.

The operation of such a machine may send the red flags of liability up for some employers. Thanks to every state having Good Samaritan laws covering lay rescuers using an AED and the civil liability immunity provided by the Federal Cardiac Arrest Survival Act, you don’t have to worry about liability issues. An AED isn’t like the advanced defibrillators used by medical professionals. In fact, The American Heart Association says that since an AED automatically analyzes and shocks, it be safely operated by trained lay rescuers. The machine is compact, portable, battery operated, easy to use, durable, and lightweight.

Aside from the potential for any employee to have an accident or underlying medical condition, American workplaces are seeing more and more employees working long past retirement age. Depending on the response of emergency services can lose precious minutes, and since the amount of time elapsed between cardiac arrest and defibrillation is directly linked to the survival of the victim, an AED can mean the difference between life and death. It just makes good sense to have at least a few of your employees trained to operate an AED.

Although the term ergonomics was first used in the late eighteenth century, it wasn’t until after World War II that the field known today as ergonomics really began to shape product design and human interaction with surrounding elements.

What Is Ergonomics? Today, ergonomics is something frequently touted by an array of professionals, from marketing and IT experts to those in the health care field. The problem is that some have a very specific and straightforward idea of what the term ergonomics means and others try to make anything and everything fit the term. The result is many that are seeking information on ergonomics walk away from the subject more confused than ever.

Evidence of the premise of what’s now known as ergonomics can be found by looking at ancient Hellenic civilizations and early Egyptians that used many ergonomic principles in their tool and workplace designs. The word is actually derived from two Greek words – ergon and nomoi. Ergon means work and nomoi means natural laws. So, ergonomics is the science of work and the human relationship to work. According to The International Ergonomics Association, the technical definition of ergonomics is a science discipline that’s concerned with comprehending human interaction with other elements of a system -and- a profession that uses data, principles, methods, and theory on a design so that it can be optimized for system performance and human well-being. A much simpler way to describe ergonomics is the science of making things around us both comfortable and efficient for our usage. Those that practice within this field are called ergonomists. Ergonomists are concerned with the science of work. They basically study work to determine how it’s performed and how it can be performed better. Ergonomics becomes useful to most every profession in that it attempts to make improvements to whatever work is being done by making things (products, processes, and services) around us more comfortable and efficient.

What Does Ergonomics Mean to Me? Now that the definition of ergonomics is clearer, users can better understand what they are most concerned with – how they use a service or product, how it meets their needs, and if they will like using it. The answers to these questions can be found by looking at the comfort and efficiency involved with ergonomics.

Comfort and efficiency go hand and hand, as comfort is one of the most important aspects of whether or not a design is effective. It goes far beyond just having something soft. Comfort in the mental elements of a service or product and during human to machine interaction are key concerns in ergonomic design.

Physical comfort in the human-machine interaction is often the first thing noticed during usage. Having this physical comfort from how the machine feels is important to users. Essentially, you aren’t going to continue to touch something that doesn’t feel good to you. Not touching it means you aren’t operating it, which thereby makes it useless. Any designer will tell you that usage is the only true measure of design quality. It’s their job to come up with inventive ways to increase the usage of their product or service. And, as mentioned above, comfort has everything to do with how often an item is used. Comfort also comes from mental aspects. What a product looks and feels like, its durability, and ease of use helps us make a mental evaluation as to if the quality of an item is congruent with what it costs. The more ergonomically designed a product or service is, the higher the quality and value perception about it will be.

Efficiency can essentially be viewed as making a process easier to perform. This may be in the form of making something more physically efficient by reducing the amount of strength required during the process, making something faster by reducing how many steps are involved in the process, reducing the amount of training or knowledge required during the process to make a task easier to complete and allow more people to safely perform the task, reducing the amount of parts composing a product to make repairs and upkeep easier, and so forth.

Much like comfort, if something is more efficient, then it’s easier to do, more likely to be done, and more likely to be done more often. Although often complicated by extensive technical terminology, the basic premise is that comfort adds to ease of use and ease of use adds to comfort, thereby making products more useful.

Workplace stress is evidenced every day, but few employers truly understand the secondary ramifications that stress can cause in the workplace. Four out of five American workers are thought to be affected by workplace stress, which is costing U.S. businesses about $300 billion each year from stress related: absenteeism, employee turnover, medical, insurance premiums, workers’ compensation, lawsuits, and diminished productivity.

Since stress is a subjective experience, it can be difficult to define. Further complicating matters is the difficulty to distinguish where work stress begins and everyday stress ends. However, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work offers an excellent definition for workplace stress: “people experience stress when they perceive an imbalance between the demands made of them and the resources they have available to cope with those demands.”

While a slippery slope to harmful stress, there’s a place for “good stress” or “eustress” in the workplace. This type of non-harmful stress can be compared to an athlete preparing for an event; while the preparation might be stressful, it could mean improved performance. A good rule of thumb for distinguishing between the two is that if the stress is chronic in nature, then it’s harmful.

Since the start of downsizing and outsourcing trends of the 1990’s, which caused a constant fear of unemployment, there is an ever growing awakening by the scientific and business community about the causes of stress and its’ physical and mental health effects. These factors are endless: a predominately service-oriented U.S. economy, growth of new operating systems, faster work pace, longer hours, and utilization of contract and temporary workers. Whatever the cause, some research has shown that about 35% of workers experience high levels of on-the-job stress and 13% are always stressed at work.

For an employer, stress has a direct effect on cost. Among that 35% of highly stressed employees above, there was a 50% increase (an extra $600 dollars per worker each year) in health care utilization cost to each employer. If depression is involved, the additional cost is even higher, as these employees use their health care plans about 70% (an extra $950 per employee) more often than average. Combine depression and stress, and the cost is astronomical – an additional $2,000 dollars per worker each year. Regardless of where the stress originates, the above is a tremendous added cost to the employer.

Employers are also starting to connect the dots between stress and productivity in a service-based economy. When stress slows the productivity of someone pushing a button on a conveyor belt, it may lower productivity. Change the stressed employee to a customer service position, and there can be a direct loss of business. Employer realization to all of the above has prompted many to develop programs to slash the long-term cost of stress, boost employee morale, and constructively boost productivity. The employer essentially has two choices:

1. View and treat reported cases of stress as an employees’ problem.
2. Acknowledge the real nature of the problem and take action to do something about it.

An increasing number of employers are opting for the second approach. Some are even actively engaged in reducing workplace stress by changing the key elements of the workplace, a tactic known as “organization of work.”

Organization of work is not a one-size-fits-all concept, but it essentially addresses the way jobs are designed and performed, along with any organizational practices that influence the job design. A key element to the success of organization of work will be involving employees in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the program. There should be an open dialogue, without fear of repercussion, for employees to assist in identifying and resolving problems.

An appealing element of addressing workplace stress with organization of work is that it doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking. In fact, it is best to build the program one piece at a time. For example, many companies will start off with an employee survey. Keep in mind that the focus should be working conditions and work-related factors that are not based on an individual judgment, but rather an employee consensus. The expertise of a consult might be beneficial if you get stuck during the process.

Sadly, current employees are not the only ones experiencing unprecedented levels of stress. A recent study showed the teenagers and the college-aged are claiming anxiety and mental health issues five times greater than their counterparts did during the Great Depression era. So, employees that are struggling with stressed employees today can possibly look forward to facing the challenge of a whole new batch of stressed employees in the future.