[A systematic review of the effectiveness of workplace safety interventions]

The authors carried out a systematic review of the effectiveness of workplace safety interventions, as a part of a wider project funded by CCM, Centre for Disease Control.

Several electronic bibliographic databases were checked, using a standardized string selection. The string contained the following four items: the intervention; job features; type of injury; efficacy/effectiveness.

Of the various databases consulted, Web of Science was the most efficient. Overall 5531 articles were selected. After reading the title and abstract, 4695 were excluded and eventually 35 systematic reviews were selected, which synthesized 769 original articles.

The main topics of the selected systematic reviews were: certain sectors (building industry, agriculture, health care); personal protective equipment; work organization and prevention management at plant level; evaluation of prevention policies by national and regional authorities. A clear need for multiple bibliographical data-base search emerged at the end of this study.