Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: Annually, many accidents and preventable events happen for the patients hospitalized in treatment centers. Therefore, the related causing factors should be recognized in order to reduce the medical errors. Accordingly, the present study aimed to assess the relationship between patient’s safety culture elements and medical errors and also the ways to tackle them.

Material and Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 380 employees working in the education and treatment centers affiliated with Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in 2015. The hospital version of patient safety culture questionnaire was used for data collection. Data were analyzed by SPSS software, version 19 using different statistical tests including multivariate analysis of variance and Pearson’s correlation.

Result: The patient safety culture was at an undesirable level in the study centers. Of the elements related to safety culture, the lowest positive scores belonged to ‘issues related to employees’, and ‘reporting’ with scores of 23% and 26%, respectively. On the other hand, ‘team working in the organizations’ (59%) and ‘organizational learning’ (57%) obtained the highest positive scores. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents did not report any errors.

Conclusion: The results of present study emphasize on creating a desirable organizational atmosphere, the need for staff participation in various levels of decision making, and creating the culture of reporting errors in order to recognize the causing factors and to promote patient safety culture.

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Introduction: A high percentage of musculoskeletal disorders in workplaces occur due to awkward posture and non-ergonomic design of the work stations for lifting and carrying of materials. To avoid these injuries, jobs should be designed in a way that ergonomics risk factors are controlled properly. The aim of this study was to utilize ergonomics interventions to minimize ergonomics risk factors in bag packing unit in a mineral processing plant.

Material and Method: This cross sectional study was carried out among 20 workers of bag packing unit. Camera recording of working postures, evaluation of medical records, interview, and REBA technique were used to identify the ergonomic risk factors. Interventions included changing the conveyor belt height and the use of spring pallets (spring table). Data were analyzed using Paired T-Test by SPSS software version 18.

Result: Before implementing ergonomics intervention, a total of 75% of evaluated postures by REBA technique obtained score of 8-10 (very high risk level) and 25% had score of 11-15 (very high risk level) that correspond to the action level 3 and 4, respectively. Following the implementation of ergonomics interventions, a total of 90% of the analyzed postures showed action level 2 (moderate risk level) and the remainder 10 percent of evaluated postures showed high risk level. Comparison of REBA technique scores before and after implementing interventions showed a significant difference (P-value < 0.05).

Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, the implementation of ergonomics interventions has remarkably decreased the required action level and it may be able to improve work-related postures.

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Introduction: Due to the high prevalence of noise and vibration in workplaces and focused of Previous studies on the auditory and musculoskeletal effects of these two harmful factors, The aim of this study was to determine the protective effect of cinnamon extract on sex hormones levels, body weight and testis weight of adult rats exposed to noise and vibration.  
Material and Methods: 64 male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to eight groups of 8 each. Group 1; treated with distilled water (Control), group 2; treated with 75 mg kg-1 cinnamon extract, group 3; exposed to noise(100 dB), 8 h/day(23:00-7:00) and group 4; exposed to noise and treated with 75 mg kg-1 cinnamon extract, group 5; exposed to vibration(1 m/s2), 8 h/day (23:00-7:00), group 6; exposed to vibration and treated with 75 mg kg-1  cinnamon extract, group 7; exposed to noise and vibration, 8 h/day (23:00-7:00) and group 8; exposed to noised and vibration and treated with 75 mg kg-1  cinnamon extarct by gavage. Fifty days later, the rats were anesthetized, blood samples to determine the amount of sex hormones were collected, and the testis was removed for weight determination. Data was analyesd by SPSS.
Results: Noise stress decreased the level of three hormones (LH, FSH and Testosterone) while vibration decreased testosterone levels merely (P<0.05).Combined exposure to noise and vibration was able to create a significant difference with control group in testosterone and LH hormone levels (P<0.05). The three factors of noise, vibration and combine of them were able to create a significant difference with control group in final body weight (P<0.05). Cinnamon extract increased the level of sex hormones compared to control group (P<0.05).
Conclusion: Cinnamon extract (due to antioxidant properties) has a protective effect on sex hormone levels in rats exposed to noise and vibration. It’s suggested further studies to determine the mechanism of cinnamon extract (in different doses) in human and animal samples.

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Introduction: Cognitive emotion regulation (CER) strategies define as cognition-based responses according to emotion-eliciting experiences that can change the type and severity of individuals’ reactions and behaviors. This modification may positively or negatively affect cognitive performance and therefore, it is a defining issue in the workplace. Notably, industries such as combined cycle power plants need to hire staff with a high cognitive ability to perform their duties in a highly efficient way. Since CER is of great importance for overall health and cognitive performance, we aimed to evaluate the state of CER among control room operators (CROs) in the Fars combined cycle power plant.
Material and Methods: The CER questionnaire (CERQ) measures nine cognitive coping strategies (i.e., self-blame, other-blame, rumination, catastrophizing, positive refocusing, planning, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, and acceptance) that are followed when an individual confronts negative events. The CERQ (short version) was administered to 57 male CROs at the Fars combined cycle power plant. The questionnaire also collected demographic data. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Version 25.0. For the normality test, Shapiro-Wilk was the method of choice.
Results: Results of the CERQ scoring showed that the median with interquartile range (IQR) in appropriate and inappropriate categories were 3.50 (3.30-4.00) and 2.62 (2.25-3.06), respectively. Of note, age (39.07 ±6.19) and work experience (14.49±6.26) were not significantly correlated with the results of CERQ.
Conclusion: Taken together, adaptive cognitive strategies (acceptance, positive refocusing, planning, positive reappraisal, and putting into perspective) were reported to be used more often than less adaptive strategies. In general, staff strategies were appropriate while facing a negative event. Although assessing CER in high-demand workplaces is necessary, factors such as managerial styles, job engagement, job satisfaction, and larger sample size should be further studied.