Place Of Employment Research Articles

Patient Safety in Nursing Care

Background. Patient safetyis an undeniable important aspectin the context of improvingthe quality of the entire health system. Improving patient’s safety should be comprehensive and includetwo dimensions of safety – technical and functional. One source of information aboutthe level of patient’s safety are medical staff, but there is a gap here, which is no central system that would collect, analyze and draw conclusions from a sufficiently large number of problems reported by stakeholders. Objectives. The aim of this study was to evaluate the patient’s safety on the basis of the declaration of nurses. Material and Methods. The study involved 160 professionally active nurses. The study was performed by the authors questionnaire based on the questionnaire “Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture” developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The selection of the sample was based on the availability of respondents. The study was performed in January 2021. More than ¾ of respondents indicated the hospital as a placeof employment. Results. Nearly 40% of respondents said that their boss rarely and very rarely takes into account the suggestions of employees for the improvement of patient’s safety. Over 40% of respondents said that their workplace is often and very often trying to do too many tasks and too fast. Conclusions. It is necessary to create a culture of safety by improving communication between doctors and nurses or line managerand nurses. There is a need for greater involvement of line manager in solving problems reported by nurses in terms of providing safe care to patients (Piel. Zdr. Publ.2021, 5, 1, 33–39).

Contact with work on-the-job and attitude towards them. Analysis on the example of the opinion of manual workers of countries of the European Union

<b>Aim: </b>What step examining in the positive assessment of the presence of robots on-the-job depends from the earlier contact with them on the example of the declaration of manual workers of countries of the European Union. If such a connection exists, it could mean that along with the course of the occurrence opinions of robots employed to the subject are changing on more beneficial. <br><b>Materials and methods:</b> The Problem was analysed with using data collected in „Examining the Attitude public with regard to robots” which served for creating the indicator of the positive attitude to robots on-the-job considering replies to four questions about robots, as well as how they influence the work. Next an attitude towards robots was compared with information about the contact with them on the job. <br><b>Results:</b> Previous experiences with work are correlated with the positive attitude to them of manual workers of the European Union. <br><b>Conclusions:</b> Achieved results are suggesting that turning towards robots can condition not only individual characteristics of manual workers, but also factors associated with a place of employment, so as the earlier contact with work or the commitment to the process of designing them.

Investigation of Health Status with Psychological Aspects

Mental disorders are among the most annoying for some employees in large organizations. Manybelieve that in order to provide good service in large organizations, it needs to meet minimumstandards and pay attention to the types of stress and other mental disorders that result from thosecenters. Undoubtedly, health care organizations are no exception, but because of the complexity ofthe structure and the extent of inter-sectoral relationships, the need for this is becoming increasinglyimportant. The purpose of this study was to investigate the general health status of employees withan approach to the psychological aspects. Human resources as an unmatched asset in health carecenters have formed one of the most important management concerns in it. Therefore, it is importantto examine the mental health status of the staff in the health care centers in view of the increasingpressures and variety of missions of those centers. Finally, this study has been presented effectivestrategies to improve the mental health of employees and subsequently to improve the quality ofhealth. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study in which all staff working in a health service centerwas surveyed. The mental health status of the staff of the center was measured by the GHQ-28questionnaire. Demographic variables, including age, sex, education, field of study, place ofemployment, were also examined. The study data showed that 93.8% of the total population werein desirable condition. Considering that more than 6% of employees lack the desired state of mentalhealth, and physicians and official forces are more prone to disorder than other employees, sopaying more attention to appropriate requirements, including necessary measures, meeting facilitiesand paying attention to the welfare and cultural needs of the staff, should be used to maintain themental health of staff

Perception of the psychosocial working conditions in a group of nurses working in hospitals and primary health care

Introduction: In the nurses group, it is required to have great psychosocial skills, guaranteeing the high quality of professional services. Purpose: To assess the psychosocial working conditions of nurses, depending on their place of employment. Material and methods: The study involved 570 randomly selected nurses. It was based on a diagnostic survey using a standardised questionnaire of Psychosocial Working Conditions (PWC). Results: Correlation factors between the overall and average level of satisfaction with the work were quite high – exceed 0.30 and even 0.40. The greater was the need for change, the lower was the job satisfaction. High sense of self-control at work, social support, or wellbeing was linked with better ratings. Psychophysical requirements were assessed as the worst, and the least frequent were the additional requirements resulting from the conflict nature of the job and overload. Nurses from voivodeship hospitals rated their work lower in the category of intellectual demands, and nurses from the Primary Health Care - in the category of requirements resulting from the conflict nature of the job and overload. Behavioural control and the need for change were different for PHC and the other two hospitals. Psychological wellbeing in district hospitals was worse than in the other two types of medical institutions. Conclusions: The larger was the sense of work control, or sense of social support, the higher was the job satisfaction. The higher the level of requirements and the need for change, the lower was the satisfaction of the assessed aspects of work. There were clear differences in the assessment of the psychosocial working conditions of nurses from hospitals and nurses from PHC.

Will there be a horticultural triangle (cluster)? Thoughts about the reconstruction of the Hungarian horticulture between two European regions

The authors of this study seek the answer to the question how to develop, in the first decade or decades of the 21st century, the university-levelhorticultural scientific training, the horticultural innovation and the scientific co-operation between companies and universities in Debrecen andin the North Great Plain Region and – in a wider sense – in Hungary to a standard being competitive even in European terms. With the synthesisof the prospects of past, present and future, they drew the following conclusions. The reconstruction of agriculture, horticulture and food industryis a part of reforming Hungary's countryside. Horticulture, producing high added value, will be able to decisively contribute to the plan whereasthe value presently produced in an agriculturally cultivated area of 1,000 euros/hectare can reach 2,000 to 3,000 euros in the next two decades.A necessary and indispensable precondition to achieving this is the strengthening of the innovation output of the Hungarian horticultural sector.Despite the numerous technical criticisms formulated in connection with the serious problems of Hungarian agricultural and horticulturalscientific innovation, no progress has been made in this field for the past one and a half decade. The scientific research of this topic hardlycontinued or did not continue at all, the up-to-date surveys and in-depth analyses were missing. The objective, basic principles and tasks of theAct CXXXIV of 2004 (TTI) enacted concerning research-development and technological innovation are clear and progressive. The co-operationbetween the National Research Technology Office and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the setting up of the Innovation Fund are hearteningopportunities. These – along with the new Higher Education Bill to be passed – may as well be suitable for restarting the Hungarian agriculturaland horticultural scientific innovation. In our opinion, this requires a new, well-considered national agricultural programme, which can beconceived in the framework of the "Ferenc Entz National Horticultural Plan" proposed by us for horticulture. In the most eastern Hungarianuniversity knowledge centre, at the University of Debrecen, the continuing of the horticultural scientific innovation strategy started in the lastdecade may be the focal point and generator of the development of the so-called "Hungarian Horticultural Triangle”, or "HungarianHorticultural Cluster". This region comprises the Northern and Southern Great Plain Regions and the area between the Danube and TiszaRivers. Here, about 70 to 75% of the total Hungarian horticultural commodity stock is produced. The objective of the HORT-INNOTECHDEBRECEN programme planned in 2004 by the University of Debrecen, Centre of Agricultural Science is to establish the horticultural scientificresearch-development and technological innovation structure and knowledge base of the Hungarian Horticultural Triangle / HungarianHorticultural Cluster. In harmony with this, the objectives are to bring about competitive, new horticultural products, to improve the conditionsof utilising them, to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises based on technological innovation, to make use of the research-development andinnovation opportunities available in the regions in an efficient manner, to as full extent as possible, to encourage the creation of places ofemployment producing high added value in the field of horticulture, to improve the technical skills of those employed in horticultural researchdevelopment and to promote their enhanced recognition by the society.

Patient safety, ethics and whistleblowing: a nursing response to the events at the Campbelltown and Camden Hospitals

IN NOVEMBER 2002, in what stands as one of the most significant whistle blowing cases in the history of the Australian health care system, four nurses went public with concerns they had about the management of clinical incidents and patient safety at two hospitals in Sydney, New South Wales. The handling of this case and its aftermath raises important moral questions concerning the nature of whistleblowing in health care domains and the possible implications for the patient safety and quality of care movement in Australia. This paper presents an overview of the case, the moral risks associated with whistleblowing, and some lessons learned. The International Council of Nurses (2000) Code of Ethics stipulates that nurses have a stringent responsibility to 'take appropriate action to safeguard individuals when their care is endangered by a co-worker or any other person'. Other local and international nursing codes of ethics and standards of professional conduct likewise obligate nurses to take appropriate action to safeguard individuals when placed at risk by the incompetent, unethical or illegal acts of others ? including the system. Despite these coded moral prescriptions for responsible and accountable professional conduct, taking appropriate action when others are placed at risk (including making reports to appropriate authorities) is never an easy task nor is it free of risk for nurses. As has been amply demonstrated in the literature, taking a moral stance to protect patient safety and quality of care can be extremely hazardous to nurses (Johnstone 1994, 2002, 2004; Ahern & McDonald 2002). In situations where nurses report their concerns to an appropriate authority but nothing is done to either investigate or validate their claims, nurses are faced with the ethical dilemma and 'choice' of whether to: do nothing ('put up and shut up'); leave their current place of employment (and possibly even the profession); or take the matter further ('blow the whistle') by reporting their concerns to an external authority that they perceive as having the power to do something about their concerns. It is rare for nurses to 'blow the whistle' in the public domain. When they do, it is usually because they perceive that something is terribly wrong and, as a matter of conscience, they cannot just look on as morally passive bystanders. For those nurses who do take a stand, the costs to them personally and professionally are almost always devastating, with no guarantees that the situation on which they have taken a public stance will be improved. Nurses who blow the whistle often end up with their careers and lives in tatters (see case studies in Johnstone 1994 & 2004).

Computing General Equilibrium Prices for Spatial Economies

THE monocentric urban area is without doubt the best known theoretical construct in the literature of urban economics. Many variations exist, but all share certain basic features: a city is located about a node on an otherwise featureless plain. This node, the Central Business District (CBD), is the only concentrated place-or the only place-of employment and shopping. Workers live in housing located outside the CBD and travel to and from their workplaces a fixed number of times each day over a uniformly available, radial transportation system. Transportation costs increase with distance of the residence from the CBD and may include either or both money and time. Households purchase their housing and other commodities to maximize a utility function, not including transportation as an input, subject to a budget constraint net of transportation expenses. As is well known, a number of propositions can be derived from these principal assumptions and some subsidiaries; for example, the existence of downward sloping land rent and housing price surfaces and the spatial segregation of households by income class and preferences (Muth, 1969). What is possibly as well known as this basic model is the difficulty of making the assumptions more realistic. As Beckmann (1974, p. 99) has noted, even minor variations tend to run into a thicket of mathematical difficulties. The effects of multiple workplaces, restrictive zoning, local amenities, and racial discrimination are only a few of the features of real urban areas that can be incorporated into the basic model only with great difficulty or not at all. Since analytical solutions to more realistic models have been difficult or impossible, there has been some recent effort to use computer simulation to examine their properties. Mills, for example, has examined the characteristics of a complex model both with congestion costs and with an efficiently priced transportation system, finding the city's land area in the latter case to be greater than in the former. This result, he suggested, would surprise some persons (1972, ch. 8). Hartwick (1974) has used the same model to study the conditions for spatial segregation or integration of various productive activities, asking, in effect, in what circumstances will persons commute to distinct work areas American-style rather than live above local shops European-style. Zeller (1971) has devised a computer simulation model to portray the bid-rent curves of firms making intrametropolitan location decisions. A particularly interesting possibility has become available recently from the work of various persons, notably Scarf (1973), on the computation of equilibrium prices for competitive economies. The algorithms developed are capable of calculating equilibrium prices, demands and supplies for an economy given only initial resource endowments and demand and supply functions. No more than quite modest restrictions need be imposed on the functions, and the characterization of the economy by number of commodities, types of consumers, and interrelationships in production can be quite rich. Since the characteristics of the various urban models are simply those of competitive economic systems in equilibrium, there would seem to be an obvious opportunity to explore the properties of quite complex models with a very general technique. As might be expected, however, efforts to apply the algorithms to models of spatial economies encounter their own problems, both technical and conceptual. To my knowledge, the first successful application to spatial Received for publication October 3, 1975. Revision accepted for publication September 14, 1976. * An earlier version of this article was presented at the European Conference on Housing Markets, Mons, Belgium, June 1976. I am indebted to Curtis Harris for careful reading and perceptive comments on earlier drafts. Herbert Scarf, Barbara Bergmann, Charles Clotfelter, Charles Lieberman, Michaei Murray, and others have also made helpful comments. Computer funds were provided in a faculty research grant from the University of Maryland Computer Science Center. Copies of the algorithm described in this paper are available upon request.