Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: Road accidents are of the most important events, which cause death and injury of a large number of people and impose huge economic losses. According to previous studies, human factors are the main cause of traffic accidents. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of behavioral factors in driving-related non-fatal accidents.

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Material and Method: The present analytical study was carried out among 150 drivers of urban and suburban transportation system in Yazd province. The research tool was Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) which is consisted of two sections: demographic information and driving behavior.

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Result: 83/9 % of the participants reported to use safety belt nearly always. The highest deliberate violations, slips, and mistakes were belonged to drivers with age group of 18-25. Moreover, deliberate violations had a significant relationship with rage (P < 0.05). Survey of behavioral factors in terms of vehicle ownership type showed that “deliberate violations” and “slips and mistakes” high among personal bus drivers and state-owned bus drivers, respectively, which shows the significant association between these behavioral factors and ownership type. What is more, rates of deliberate and unintentional violations and slips were higher among those with a history of two times incidents (P < 0.004).

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Conclusion: The results revealed that behavioral factors such as age, type of vehicle ownership, and accident history played a significant role in occurrence of traffic accidents.

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Introduction: Safety climate is the perception of personnel about the priority of safety in an organization. The objective of this study was to evaluate safety climate using Nordic questionnaire in a hospital.

Material and Method: In this cross-sectional study, 92 nurses working in different wards of a hospital in uromia city, Iran, filled out the NOSACQ-50 questionnaire. The responses of nurses were recorded with a 4-point Likert scale. The results were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics.

Results: Seventy-two percent of nurses were female and the remainders (28%) were men. The mean score of safety climate dimensions was different. “Management safety priority, commitment, and competence” and “Safety communication, learning, and trust in co-workers safety competence” dimensions obtained the lowest and the highest scores by nurses, respectively. The mean score of safety climate ranged 2.49 to 2.67 in different wards of the hospital. What is more, the mean safety climate was not statistically differed among nurses of various age and work experience categories (P-value> 0.05).

Conclusion: According to the results, it can be noted that the level of safety climate in the hospital was fairly good from the nurses’ viewpoint. However, attempts should be made to improve it, especially in the safety management related dimensions. Corrective control measures should be implemented in all wards of the hospital for all personnel with any age and work experience.

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Introduction: Limited studies have been done to evaluate the whole-body vibration (WBV) exposure experienced by Taxi drivers. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the exposure to whole body vibration and repeated shocks in urban taxi drivers and also to compare different methods of evaluation in this job environment.

Material and Method: Measurement and evaluation process were conducted in accordance with procedure of the ISO 2631-1 and ISO 2631-5 standards. The measurements were done by SVAN 958 Sound and Vibration Analyzer and using tri-axial accelerometer centered on the contact surface between the seat and the driver in 9 taxis.  

Result: The measurements done according to ISO 2631-1 method showed greater risk compared to Daily Equivalent Static Compression Dose, Sed, presented in ISO 2631-5. Calculated daily exposure durations for exposure action level in root-mean square, vibration dose value, and daily equivalent static compressive stress methods were 4.55, 3.54 and 31.70 hours, respectively.

Conclusion: The large differences in estimated exposure durations of action limits and permissible limits resulted by different methods reflect the inconsistency of the selected evaluation methods. Therefore, future research is necessary to amend the limits presented in the standard.

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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: Physical workload is one of the main risk factors in developing of musculoskeletal disorders in construction workers. The current study was carried out to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and its relationship with demographic characteristics and physical work load index (PWLI)in construction workers.  
Material and Methods: This investigation was a descriptive and cross-sectional study in which 162 subjects including 75 rebar and 87 bricklayer workers were participated. Nordic musculoskeletal and physical workload questionnaires were employed as the tools of this study. Chi-squared and logistic regression tests were used for statistical analysis in SPSS 21 software.
Results: The mean of age and working experience of construction workers were 34.6±8.6 and 11.2±6.8 years, respectively. The most prevalent symptoms were in the body regions of upper back (57.4%), lower back (35.8%), and neck (30.2%). In the univariate analysis, the musculoskeletal symptoms of shoulders, low back, feet, knees, and thighs with PWLI and the upper back pain with age, working experience, and working hours had significant relationships (P<0.05). According to logistic regression analysis, with the increase of the value of PWLI to more than 90 percentile, the chance of having symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders in low back, knees, and feet and also with the increase of working hour to more than 8 hours, the chance of having symptoms in low back and feet increased significantly.
Conclusion: The prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders was high in the studied construction workers. Most of the musculoskeletal symptoms were correlated with PWLI. Therefore, PWLI could be used to determine the construction jobs with the high risk of musculoskeletal disorders. To reduce the symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders in construction workers, the reduction of sources of physical workloads such as heavy material handling and awkward postures are proposed. It is also recommended that the working hours be limited to less than 8 hours.

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Introduction: The important parameters for evaluating the performance of particle filtering respirators in international standards are the filtration efficiency and respiratory resistance of the mask filter against airflow passage. To improve nanofiber filtration efficiency while creating the least breathing difficulty for the wearer, various research has been or is being conducted worldwide. This study investigated the effect of using polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofiber composite membrane and montmorillonite clay nanoparticles (MMT) in enhancing particle-filtering respirators’ filter performance, achieving higher filtration efficiency while maintaining optimal respiratory resistance conditions.
Material and Methods: First, PAN polymer solution containing zero, 1%, 2%, 3%, and 5% MMT nanoparticles was prepared, and then PAN/MMT nanofiber composite membrane was synthesized in an electrospinning machine. Filtration efficiency was measured in diameter range of 0.3, 0.5, 1, and 3 microns using sodium chloride aerosol. Additionally, filter breathing resistance was measured at flow rates of 30, 85, and 95 liters per minute.
Results: The efficiency of synthesized composite nanofilters for particle purification can be improved by adding MMT nanoparticles to PAN nanofibers. Optimal MMT concentration was found to be 2%. This addition resulted in an increase in filtration efficiency for particles with sizes of 0.3, 0.5, 1, and 3 microns by 4.2%, 4.88%, 3.77%, and 2.75% respectively without causing significant difference in respiratory resistance. Improved filtration efficiency can be attributed to enhanced morphology of composite nanofilters resulting from addition of MMT nanoparticles. Adding 2% MMT nanoparticles to PAN nanofibers resulted in uniform distribution and smaller fiber dimensions which did not significantly affect Packing density and porosity.
Conclusion: If 2% of MMT nanoparticles are added to PAN nanofibers and used to produce particle respirators, resulting respirator will exhibit a 4.2% increase in particle filtration efficiency without increasing breathing difficulty for user. This result can help protect users from particulate pollutants in air pollution conditions.