Communication aspects of feedback from workers’ health surveillance due to hand-arm vibration exposure − a scoping review

TL;DR

This scoping review explores how feedback from health surveillance is communicated to workers and employers, focusing on areas relevant to hand-arm vibration exposure.

Contribution

The study identifies communication aspects of health surveillance feedback, despite no direct research on hand-arm vibration exposure.

Findings

No studies directly addressed communication in health surveillance for hand-arm vibration exposure.

30 studies were found that discussed feedback mechanisms relevant to similar health surveillance contexts.

Communication aspects included reporting results to employees, employers, and health systems.

Abstract

The feedback of the surveillance results to the employee and the employer largely determines the impact of workers’ health surveillance on workers’ health and exposure. We are unaware of any guidebooks or articles on performing feedback on regulated workers’ health surveillance, e.g., for vibration-exposed workers.

To identify existing knowledge of the communication aspects related to workers’ health surveillance feedback in hand-arm vibration exposure, considering the perspectives of employees, employers, and groups.

We followed the extension for the Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist. No time limits were set, so the databases were searched from their start (MEDLINE 1946 and EMBASE 1947) until the date of the full search (March 2024). Relevant information was extracted from 30 articles—none concerned hand-arm vibration but covered aspects of workers’ health surveillance feedback.

Two authors screened all abstracts in random pairs. They were blinded to each other’s results. The third author resolved conflicts. Inclusion criteria were full-text articles, humans, workers’ health surveillance, and aspects of communication reporting results to the employee, the workplace, or a health surveillance system. Altogether, 1914 abstracts were screened, and 84 full-text articles were assessed, of which 54 were excluded as they did not fulfill the criteria. The final publications selected included 30 articles published between 1980 and 2023; two blinded authors extracted relevant information in random pairs.

We found 16 of the included studies of longitudinal design, seven qualitative studies, four studies were cross-sectional, and three publications were reviews. The studies reported on workers’ health surveillance that addressed musculoskeletal disorders and pain (n=8), risk of cardiovascular disorders (n=4) or hearing disorder (n=3), workability and fitness for duty (n=3), mental health (n=2), allergy/ asthma (n=2), and cancer (n=1). Additionally, seven studies addressed a mixture of disorders and general health (n=7).

No publications addressed communication in workers’ health surveillance due to hand-arm vibration exposure. However, we identified 30 studies addressing feedback from workers’ health surveillance that were also relevant to workers’ health surveillance due to hand-arm vibration exposure.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12995-025-00463-8.

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