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Few completed studies on the physical working environment of the police

The Swedish Agency for Work Environment expertise will find out which risk and health factors exist in the physical, organizational and social work environment for patrolling police officers.

The appointed working group intends to find out whether the risk and health factors look different depending on age, gender, class, migration background and sexual orientation. We are also interested in what measures have been shown to be effective in strengthening the physical, organizational and social working environment of police officers on external duty.

The working group

The working group, consisting of Johanna Sundqvist, university lecturer and deputy director with operational responsibility for research development at the unit for police training, Mehdi Ghazinour, researcher with a focus on police personality, stress and work environment at the unit for police training and Malin Eriksson, sociologist, professor of social work and docent in public health science, has gone through 8,500 articles in the field and landed on 86 articles to base the compilation on.

The work

– We were a little surprised that we found so few studies done on the physical work environment for police officers on external duty, says Johanna Sundqvist.

In August 2023, the group is at its best compiling the results of the articles for the physical/operational, organizational and social work environment and have started writing.

–The police’s work in external service makes the sector unique from a work environment perspective, it is an important work and I look forward to sharing the results of the study, says Helene Johansson, process leading analyst at the Swedish Agency for Work Environment and Expertise.

The results of the study will be reported in December 2023.