UCSF

Guided by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health conceptual framework for worker well-being, this qualitative study explored the perceptions and beliefs regarding the health, well-being, and health and safety related behaviors at the intersection of personal characteristics and professional responsibilities in a convenience sample of electricians and transit vehicle mechanics working for the Bay Area Rapid Transit in California. The nine participants were recruited from five transit railyards in urban cities during their shifts and were interviewed individually outside work hours. Using thematic analysis, five themes emerged: health equals workability; hazard awareness and normalization; coexisting with chronic pain; health behavior influenced by personal and social factors not health access; and professional expertise. Study findings indicate how conditions of employment impacted worker well-being in the context of structures that connected worker experiences in a shared time and physical workspace. These workers strongly believed that health was the ability to work for as long as they chose by maintaining their professional skills and by being aware of, managing and normalizing workplace hazards even if it was at their personal detriment. They coexisted with chronic pain primarily by ignoring pain for personal and collegial reasons, even though lifelong employer-based health care was available. Diagnosed mental health conditions were not as readily acknowledged as were physical health conditions. There is much occupational health nurses could do, using a mix of traditional and newer strategies, to enhance worker health, well-being, and safety and to respond to our changing post-COVID-19 pandemic work-world and its workers.