Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: Teaching has been reported stressful. Although, the majority of teachers aren’t anxious or unmotivated and they even consider their job valuable and satisfying. Job demands-resources (JD-R) is a comprehensive model in occupational stress domain that simultaneously examines the stressful and motivational aspects of occupations and their related outcomes. Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to investigate job characteristics of teaching (job demands and job resources) and their subsequent outcomes by utilizing proposed model.

Material and Method: This study was a cross-sectional design among 247 high school teachers in Tehran city who were selected by two-stage cluster sampling in spring and summer of 1391. Three aspects of job demands (pupil misbehavior, work-family conflict, and cognitive demand), 2 aspects of job resources (supervisory support and job condition), emotional exhaustion, vigor, teacher’s illness symptoms, and organizational commitment were assessed using job demands-resources model. The data were analyzed by means of SPSS 21 program and path analysis by using AMOS 23 program.

Result: According to the results, model fit indices were in acceptable range and all the coefficient paths were significant (p<0.001). Considering model, Job demands were a better predictor for emotional exhaustion (β=0.3) than job resources (β=0.2). However, they had an equal but opposite impact on vigor (β=±0.27). Moreover, we observed partial mediation relationships between job demands and illness symptoms and job resources and organizational commitment via emotional exhaustion and vigor respectively.

Conclusion: Based on the findings, fostering initiatives with priorities of firstly regulating job demands and secondly improving job resources can be effective strategies to reduce job related burnout and promoting job engagement, health and organizational commitment of teachers

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Introduction: Patients’ safety culture indicates the extent to which the staffs prioritize the safety of patients. In medical centers, it is very important to pay attention to the patients’safety. Hence, the patients’safety culture should be examined and improved. One of the factors which lead to the improved patients’ safety culture is structural empowerment. Structural empowerment refers to adjusting workplace structures by managers and facilitating the staffs’ access to organizational facilities. In other words, structural empowerment refers to the staffs’ access to four environmental factors (i.e., opportunity, information, support, and resources) in the organization. The objective of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the dimensions of structural empowerment and patients’ safety culture.
Material and method: The current study was descriptive-correlational research method, and the population included all staffs (i.e., 275 individuals) in the nursing department of a public hospital in Ahvaz. The research sample included 221 staffs who were selected through stratified random sampling. The data were collected through standardized tools, including Effective Working Conditions (the second version), and Patients’ Safety Culture in Hospitals questionnaires. The reliability of the questionnaires was examined through Cronbach’s alpha. Pearson correlation coefficient, multiple regression analysis (simultaneous method) and one-way analysis of variance were used to analyze the data through SPSS software, version 16.
Results: The dimensions of opportunity, support and resources have a positive and significant relationship with the patients’ safety culture. However, the information dimension is not significantly related to the patients’ safety culture. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that the dimensions of structural empowerment predict 59% of the variance of the patients’ safety culture, and from among all dimensions of structural empowerment, opportunity and information in the model do not have a significant effect on the patients’ safety culture. In addition, support and resources are the most important predictors of the criterion variables. The results of one-way analysis of variance showed that the score of safety culture among the midwives has the highest value, and the lowest value is attributed to the sitters. In other words, midwives pay more attention to the safety of patients and patients’ safety culture.
Conclusion: Structural empowerment is one of the factors affecting patients’ safety culture which increases patients’ safety. Focusing on structural empowerment improves patients’ safety culture because when the staffs are structurally empowered, their accuracy and performance would improve, and they would provide more safe services to the patients. Therefore, hospital managers are advised to pay attention to the issue  of structural empowerment in order to strengthen the patients’ safety culture, and to provide the necessary training and equipment to improve the structural empowerment of their staffs, especially nurses.