Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: Occupational injuries and accidents as one of the problems have always been considered important in occupational environments. Domino model that Heinrich was formed to pursue the idea of the cause of the accident is the man. Thus one of the effective way to reduce accidents will be control by the unsafe behaviors among workers by promoting safety culture.

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Material and Method: In this descriptive - analytical study, the reliability and exploratory factor analysis was used to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire. In total 303 questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 17 software.

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Result: The alpha crumbed, coefficient was 0/86. Structural factor of the questionnaire was evaluated using factor analysis. KMO and Bartlett’s sphericity test coefficient were 0/909 and 9785/057, respectively. The varimax rotation showed that all test questions are based on factors.

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Conclusion: The results indicated favorable validity of this questionnaire for use in detergents and cleaners industries within the country. Considering the load factor safety culture in detergents and cleaners industries, contained 5 factors including “management commitment”, “education and information exchange,” “supportive environment”, “barriers” and “priority to safety”. The obtained the correlations, the highest positive correlation was belong to the “management commitment” (r=0/952), as the strongest correlation with the safety culture.

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Introduction: In the interaction between man and machine, the human behavior plays a key role in the accidents occurrence and the risks. Safety culture models can be a base to safety culture assessments and may lead scientists toward effective aspects of organization safety. The aim of present study was to develop and offer a specific questionnaire for safety culture assessment according to the customized model in an automotive industry.

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Material and Method: In this cross-sectional analytical study, a questionnaire including 16 items and 37 questions was developed based on management, individual, and organizational factors. Then, the reliability and validity of the developed questionnaire, it were studied among 30 employees of an automotive company.

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Result: Concerning the reliability of the questionnaire, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.855. In the context of validity of the questionnaire, the simplicity and clarification of contents were investigated by means of Expert Analysis. Moreover, in terms of the integral components of culture, according to the factorial analysis, this evaluation regarded to have ten main components.

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Conclusion: So far, there was no exclusive tool for evaluating safety culture based on a customized model. The findings of the present study showed that evaluating safety culture using the administered questionnaire is valid and reliable in the understudied industry.

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Introduction: Following the presentation of Domino model by Heinrich in 1931 this idea was formed that human is the most important cause of accidents. According to Heinrich, unsafe behavior (88%), unsafe condition (10%) and unexpected factors (2%) are involved in accidents causation. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigates workers safety, culture and its influencing factors in detergent and cleaner company.

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Material and Method: In order to determine the level of safety culture in the understudy detergent producing company a questioner developed in 2010 was used. It was included dimensions of management commitment, training and information exchange, protective environment, inhibitory factors and priority to safety. After collecting the questionnaires, data were analyzed using SPSS version 17.

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Result: The mean age of the participants of 37.5 years old and the mean work experience 13.7 years. 52.3 % of workers had not experienced any accident during their working year. Moreover, mean (SD) score of safety culture was 180.51 (±35.216).

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Conclusion: The difference of safety culture score were statistically different among occupational groups and also between workers with and without accidents.

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Introduction: Investigation of accidents have shown that more than 90% of industrial accidents are related to human aspects. What is more, safe behaviors can not be institutionalized in industries by only using technical-engineering measures and enacting safety rules. Building a positive and effective safety culture can make individuals aware of hazards and consequently reduce accidents in the workplace.

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Material and Method: In this analytical-descriptive study, a standardized safety culture questionnaire was used. The questionnaire comprised of 40 question including five dimensions of: training, work environment, safety priority, information exchanges and management commitment. In this regard, the questionnaire was distributed among personnel of three laboratories in a petrochemical company. Five point Likert scale was for recording the responses.

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Result: The mean score for safety culture was 136.7 for laboratory personnel which was considered positive according to the presented definition. In this sense, safety priority and management commitment with score of 31.9 and 25.2 obtained respectively the dimensions of safety culture.

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Conclusion: Strong and positive safety culture among laboratory personnel would prevent incidence of many occupational accidents. In another word, it would help organizations to facilitate access to higher standards.

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Introduction: Safety culture is considered as the core of an organization’s safety management system. Safety culture is an organization ability to achieve higher standards of safety. The aim of this study was to investigate safety culture and its influencing factors and relation to the accident in a dam construction project.

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Material and Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 130 workers at a dam construction project. A standardized questionnaire included 59 questions was used to determine the level of safety culture. The accidents occurred in the project during the year were collected based on demographic characteristics. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 19.

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Result: The mean age of the subjects, their work experience and score of safety culture were 35.05, 7.5 Years and 183.2, respectively. Twenty seven accidents were recorded during the year in project. The most common cause of the accidents was indiscretions (33.3%). There was a statistically significant correlation between safety culture to occurred accidents and history of accident (P<0.05). The percentage of a positive safety culture of workers with an experience of accident (71.8%) was more than that of those with no experience of accident (45.1%). There was not a statistically significant correlation between safety culture and age, work experience, education, and marital status.

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Conclusion: It seems that safety culture on the project is influenced by the experience of accident and also it was strongly significant with the occurred accidents. Consequently, in order to create a positive safety culture in the workplace many factors including safety education program, work experience and accidents analysis should be considered.

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Introduction: Patient safety is an important issue in regard to hospital servicesand any problem can cause adverse consequences. The purpose of this study was to assess the patients’safety culture at educational hospitals in Tehran.

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Material and Method: The present descriptive-cross sectional study was carried out among 312 health care workers in Baharloo, Amir Aalam, Shariati and Sina hospitals in Tehran, which were selected by cluster sampling. The participants were chosen randomly in each cluster. Safety Culture Survey questionnaire including 12 dimensions was used to assess patient safety culture. Cronbach’s alpha and test-retest coefficient were estimated 81 and 79 percent, respectively.

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Result: Nurses comprised 61 percent of participants in the study. 42% of staff had less than 5 years work experience. Of the 12 dimensions of patient safety culture, the frequency of reporting and exchange of information had the minimum average of 56 and 55, respectively. Moreover, the dimensions of organizational learning and expectations-management measuresobtained the highestmean score (69)among 12 dimensions of patient safety culture. Total mean patient safety culture in understudy hospitals was 63.

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Conclusion: It should be noted that paying more attention to the patient safety culture can lead to improve hospitals condition, as a whole, and to have a patient-friendly environment. Special attention should be paid to dimensions with the lowest mean score in order to strengthen them.

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Introduction: Provision of high quality nursing care for patients, has made patient safety culture as an important issue for improving the quality of health care in the country. This study aimed to determine the relationship between nurses’ job satisfaction and patient safety culture in hospitals of Rasht city, Iran.

Material and Method: This research is a descriptive-analytical, cross-sectional, and field data collection study. Nurses working in public and private hospitals in Rasht City comprised the study population, of whom 322 subjects were selected randomly as the study sample. The Wakefield questionnaire and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality questionnaire were employed to investigate nurses’ job satisfaction and patient safety culture, respectively. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used for statistical hypothesis testing, employing SPSS software version 19.

Result: The results showed that according to the respondents’ viewpoints, scores of job satisfaction (Mean(SD):3.59±0.68) and patient safety culture (Mean(SD):54/0±31/3) Rasht city hospitals were at the average level. Furthermore, there was a significant direct relationship between nurses’ job satisfaction and patient safety culture with the correlation coefficient of 0.643 at the 0.01 level of significance.

Conclusion: According to the findings, it is necessary to improve study nurses’ job satisfaction and patient safety culture. Moreover, according to statistical correlation between research variables, increasing nurses’ job satisfaction results in improvement of patient safety culture.

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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: Safety in construction needs not only operating the executive laws and instructions but also the safety culture of all the workers in workshops. Safety culture is a factor by which all the workers are committed to having a positive share in the safety of their coworkers and themselves. Therefore, the aim of this study is identification of safety culture factors and ranking occupations in jobsites in order to improve the safety condition and promote the safety culture of high-rise projects.

Material and Method: In this descriptive-analytical study, first, safety culture criteria in construction projects are identified by a literature review. Then, 8 factors of safety culture are weighted using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process. Finally, 10 different occupations in high-rise workshops are ranked from the point of view of safety culture using fuzzy TOPSIS method.  

Result: Results of ranking the criteria show that the most important criteria are safety attitude, supervision, policy of organization and safety training. Moreover, in high-rise construction the site superintendent and supervisor occupations have the highest and laborers have the lowest safety culture.

Conclusion: In this study, after evaluating different construction occupations by hybrid FTOPSIS-FAHP method, the results are compared with the results of previous researches. Here, it was found that the findings are consistent with previous studies. On the other hand, low level of safety culture of construction laborers among the investigated occupations shows weakness in safety training and attitude; hence, the factors such as more safety supervision and training must be considered in order to create a positive safety culture for the workers.

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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.

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Introduction: The formation and evolution of culture in organizations are related to the learning experiences of their members over time. In this regard, the present study was conducted to empirically investigate the correlation relationship between the Learning Organization (LO) and safety culture concepts in Iran’s nuclear and radiological industries.
Material and Methods: A theoretical model concerning the connections between seven facets of LO and safety culture was proposed. It was then empirically tested with a structural equation modeling PLS analysis of a survey data set of 388 observations, collected from the radiation workers of 45 organizations in 4 Iranian industrial groups i.e. medical radiation, industrial radiography, nuclear installations, and radiological installations. Yang’s DLOQ questionnaire in 2004 and IAEA’s SCPQ-LH questionnaire in 2017 were used to measure LO and safety culture, respectively.
Results: According to the findings of this study, being a LO could explain 52% of the variance in safety culture. Besides, it was observed that the strength of this relationship between four different subpopulations of Iran’s radiological and nuclear industries due to their different contexts, had significant differences and they vary from 34% for industrial radiography to 65% for nuclear installations.
Conclusion: The existence of LO conditions in the working environment is linked to high safety culture. Thus, the LO can be joined to the toolbox of consultants, managers, and other organizational developers attempting to advance the conditions for safety at work.