Healthcare workers may have different risk for severe outcomes compared with the general population during diverse crises. This paper introduces the concept of healthcare worker versus population hazard (HPH), the risk of an outcome of interest in active healthcare workers compared with the general population they serve. HPH can be expressed with relative risk (HPH(r)) and absolute risk difference (HPH(a)) metrics. Illustrative examples are drawn from infectious outbreaks, war, and the COVID-19 pandemic on death outcomes. HPH can be extreme for lethal outbreaks (HPH(r) = 30 to 143, HPH(a) = 8 to 91 per 1000 for Ebola deaths in 3 Western African countries in 2013-5), and modestly high in relative terms and very high in absolute terms for protracted, major armed conflicts (HPH(r) = 1.38 and HPH(a) = 10.2 for Syria during 2011–2024). Conversely, healthcare workers had 8-12-fold lower risk than the population they served for pandemic excess deaths (physicians in USA) or COVID-19 deaths (physicians in Ontario, healthcare workers in Finland), while healthcare workers in Indonesia did not have this advantage for COVID-19 deaths versus the general population. HPH is susceptible to data inaccuracies in numbers of at-risk populations and of outcomes of interest. Importantly, inferences about healthcare worker risk can be misleading, if deaths of retired healthcare workers contaminate the risk calculations– as in the case of misleading early perceptions of exaggerated COVID-19 risk for healthcare professionals. HPH can offer useful insights for risk assessment to healthcare professionals, the general public, and policy makers and may be useful to monitor for planning and interventions during crises.

在各种危机中，医护人员与普通人群发生严重后果的风险可能不同。本文介绍了医护人员与人群危害 （HPH） 的概念，即与他们所服务的普通人群相比，在职医护人员感兴趣的结果风险。HPH 可以用相对风险 （HPH（r）） 和绝对风险差 （HPH（a）） 指标来表示。从传染病爆发、战争和 COVID-19 大流行中得出关于死亡结果的说明性示例。致命性爆发的 HPH 可能是极端的（2013-5 年西非 3 个国家的埃博拉死亡人数为 HPH（r） = 30 至 143，HPH（a） = 8 至 91/1000），对于旷日持久的重大武装冲突，相对值为适度高，绝对值为非常高（2011-2024 年叙利亚的 HPH（r） = 1.38 和 HPH（a） = 10.2）。相反，医护人员的大流行超额死亡（美国医生）或 COVID-19 死亡（安大略省的医生、芬兰的医护人员）的风险比他们所服务的人群低 8-12 倍，而印度尼西亚的医护人员在 COVID-19 死亡方面没有这种优势与普通人群相比。HPH 容易受到高危人群数量和感兴趣结果的数据不准确的影响。重要的是，如果退休医护人员的死亡污染了风险计算，那么关于医护人员风险的推断可能会产生误导，例如误导医护人员早期对夸大 COVID-19 风险的看法。HPH 可以为医疗保健专业人员、公众和政策制定者提供风险评估的有用见解，并可能有助于在危机期间监测规划和干预。