Mortality Risks of U.S. Healthcare Workers

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Epidemiology
• Occupational Health

Background:

• Healthcare workers exhibit lower mortality rates than the general population.
• Explanations include specialized medical knowledge, healthcare access, and higher education levels.
• This study investigates the role of education in healthcare worker mortality and cause-specific risks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the extent to which educational level explains lower all-cause mortality in U.S. healthcare workers.
• To compare cause-specific mortality risks between healthcare and non-healthcare workers.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a nationally representative sample from the 2008 American Community Survey (3.31 million individuals).
• Followed healthcare (176,000) and non-healthcare (1.66 million) workers for mortality through 2019.
• Employed Cox models to estimate hazard ratios for all-cause and cause-specific mortality.

Main Results:

• Healthcare workers had lower age- and sex-standardized all-cause death rates (370.7/100,000) than non-healthcare workers (442.2/100,000).
• This difference in all-cause mortality disappeared after adjusting for education level (aHR=1.00).
• Healthcare workers had lower mortality risks for cardiovascular disease (aHR=0.94) and lung cancer (aHR=0.89), but higher risks for pancreatic cancer (aHR=1.21) and external causes (aHR=1.20).

Conclusions:

• Higher educational attainment is the primary factor for the longer life expectancy observed in U.S. healthcare workers.
• While education explains overall mortality differences, healthcare employment is associated with reduced risks of death from cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer.
• Conversely, healthcare work is linked to increased hazards of death from external causes.