Patients saftey Thesis Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Patients saftey - Thesis Example It does seem likely, however, that, under stress, hospital staff is more likely to make mistakes that can contribute to the emergence of accidents, because high stress levels can impair the level of concentration, cognitive information processing, decision-making and work behavior (Furney, Press). The main research question that guided the present study was whether objective work stressors and resources predict important characteristics of stressful events that are related to safety among novice nurses. The characteristics in question were the similarity of the particular event to previously experienced events and the probability that the event would recur in the future. Thus, the risk potential contained in the event was assessed in terms of the event being a recurrent rather than a singular event - either because it had occurred in the past and/or because it was estimated to have a high chance of recurrence. Work stressors and job control both assessed by observer ratings were respectively expected to be positively and negatively associated with the two indicators of risk potential. Work stress, especially work overload (e.g. by time pressure) has been shown to be associated with occupational accidents (e.g. Frone 1998, 565, Zohar 2000, 591) and medical malpractice (Jones et al. 1998, 730). Conversely, resources such as job autonomy or job control are positively related not only to health and productivity but also to safe working practices (Parker et al. 2001, 214). This study investigates the association between chronic job stressors and characteristics of safety-related stressful events encountered at work. Typically, in this kind of research, both predictors and dependent variables are assessed by means of self-report, and this presents a risk of overestimating the association because of correlated error (Semmer et al. 2004, 210). As such, many researchers recommend measuring independent and dependent variables with different methods