Health care workers (HCWs) have an increased risk of exposure to infectious agents including (among others) tuberculosis, influenza, norovirus, and Clostridium difficile as a consequence of patient care1,2 Most occupational transmission is associated with violation of one or more basic principles of infection control: handwashing; vaccination of HCWs; and prompt isolation.3 OH surveillance is paramount in guiding efforts to improve worker safety and health and to monitor trends and progress over time.4 GIS can assist in supporting health situation analysis and surveillance for the prevention and control of health problems, for example: by creating temporal-spatial maps of outbreaks, public health workers can visualize the spread of cases as the outbreak progresses; spatial/database queries allow for selection of a specific location or condition to focus public health resources.
Objective
This paper describes a GIS tool which maps the floors and departments of a Southeastern Ontario tertiary care hospital for the purpose of monitoring respiratory and gastrointestinal (GI)-related Occupational Health (OH) visits among hospital employees.