Psychosocial safety climate, emotional exhaustion, and work injuries in healthcare workplaces

Abstract

Preventing work injuries requires a clear understanding of how they occur, how they are recorded, and the accuracy of injury surveillance. Our innovation was to examine how psychosocial safety climate (PSC) influences the development of reported and unreported physical and psychological workplace injuries beyond (physical) safety climate, via the erosion of psychological health (emotional exhaustion). Self-report data (T2, 2013) from 214 hospital employees (18 teams) were linked at the team level to the hospital workplace injury register (T1, 2012; T2, 2013; and T3, 2014). Concordance between survey-reported and registered injury rates was low (36%), indicating that many injuries go unreported. Safety climate was the strongest predictor of T2 registered injury rates (controlling for T1); PSC and emotional exhaustion also played a role. Emotional exhaustion was the strongest predictor of survey-reported total injuries and underreporting. Multilevel analysis showed that low PSC, emanating from senior managers and transmitted through teams, was the origin of psychological health erosion (i.e., low emotional exhaustion), which culminated in greater self-reported work injuries and injury underreporting (both physical and psychological). These results underscore the need to consider, in theory and practice, a dual physical-psychosocial safety explanation of injury events and a psychosocial explanation of injury underreporting.

Relationship between authentic leadership and nurses' intent to leave: The mediating role of work environment and burnout

“…Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter (2001) indicated that exhaustion is the major component of burnout and that "I'm exhausted" was also the first expression people used when experiencing burnout. Many researchers have also adopted the emotional exhaustion dimension to measure burnout (Fernández-Castro et al, 2017;Hülsheger, Alberts, Feinholdt, & Lang, 2013;Zadow, Dollard, Mclinton, Lawrence, & Tuckey, 2017).…”

Psychosocial safety climate as a moderator of the moderators: Contextualizing JDR models and emotional demands effects

“…While most of the previous studies on PSC have focused on the primary function of PSC, as direct effect or the mediating effect (Idris, Dollard, Coward, & Dormann, ; Idris et al ., ), our study adds to the PSC literature by exploring its secondary function (i.e., as a moderating effect) and the mechanism behind this. Third, with increased research attention on health care workplace safety, as PSC is related to workplace injuries (Zadow, Dollard, McLinton, Lawrence, & Tuckey, ), we have responded to the calls from researchers to examine the origins of workplace safety such as organizational climate and worker psychological health in health care settings. Finally, we tested our research framework in Malaysia, a developing Eastern country with rapidly increasing work pace and competitiveness due to global demands, given that research on the psychosocial risk factors in developing countries is still lacking (Kortum & Leka, ; Figure ).…”

Demographic, occupational, and societal features associated with burnout among medical oncology staff members: Cross‐sectional results of a Cancer Center in Beijing, China

“…Emotional exhaustion means a loss of enthusiasm for work . In our study, the frequency of high EE in the 31 to 40 age group was higher than in other age groups.…”

“…Burnout is usually measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). EE is a feeling of energy deficiency and measures feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by work; DP is defined as impersonal and even cynical attitudes toward patients or coworkers and measures an unfeeling and impersonal response toward recipients of one's service, care treatment, or instruction; PA refers to a decrease in self‐esteem or perceived performance and measures feelings of competence and successful achievement in work.…”