Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: Stress is one of the major problems of living in industrial societies. Job and career issues are the most important causes of stress. Job stress is one of the important factors in causing psychological injury and illness in staff and decreasing productivity in organizations. Since human resources are among the most important assets of any organization, identification of the factors causing job stress is very crucial. Therefore current study aimed to investigate the causes of occupational stress in the staff of different units of the legal medicine centers in the Northwest Provinces.
 
Materials and Methods: A Descriptive-analytical study was conducted was designed and conducted on 166 employees of the various units of the legal medicines centers of Tabriz, Urmia, Ardebil and Zanjan cities by census statistical method during 2016-2017. Data were collected using questionnaires consist of demographic information and Cooper job stress questionnaire. The  collected  data  were  analyzed  by  means  of  SPSS  software  using  t-test  for  independent  groups,  ANOVA,  chi square, Pearson and  Spearman  correlation  coefficients, at the significant level of P<0.05.
 
Results: It was found that about 50% of the staff had moderate job stress and more than 12% had severe job stress. The comparison of mean job stress between healthy and ill individuals showed that the patients had a higher mean of job stress than healthy individuals, and this difference was statistically significant (P<0.001). The study of interference between work and life issue (family) also showed that the people whose work always interferes with their life issues had higher mean job stress than the other two groups and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.001). The result of this study also showed that there is a significant direct relationship between job stress and smoking (P<0.045), work interference and life issue (P<0.001), and a significant inverse relationship (P<0.044) with literacy.  Lower incomes, shifting the place of work, the heavy work, the ignorance of the managers to work problems, dealing directly with the people, the pressures due to the completion or working against deadlines, and the lack of hope for job promotion, respectively, are the factors causing stress in the organization.
 
Conclusion: Compared with employees of other organizations, the legal medicines staff seemed to have a much higher prevalence of stress. The organizational authorities could help staff to improve the quality of life and reduce occupational stress by creating the correct communication, desirable support and generating the appropriate environment for job activities.

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Introduction: Maintaining and improving organizational safety requires a strong safety culture. Following the occurrence of occupational incidents, proper registration, reporting, and investigation is a key requirement for safety culture to provide an appropriate learning culture. As a result, this study was carried out to assess the culture of occupational incident registration, reporting, and investigation in the province of west Azarbaijan’s industries.
Material and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, data on the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incident were collected using a 68-item questionnaire. A total of 420 employees from a number of construction and mine companies, as well as hospitals participated in this study.
Results: The results of study showed that the average total score for the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents was 3.08 (±0.38), with the factor of corrective action had the highest 3.17 (±0.72) and the reasons for lack of reporting had the lowest 2.90 (±0.54) scores. There was also a significant relationship between the average score of the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents with education, industries, and companies. Employees who attended training courses had a lower mean score for the culture of occupational incident’ registration, reporting, and investigation than those who did not take training courses. The mean score of the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents of the employees who had experienced an occupational accident was lower than those who had not experience occupational accidents in the past.
Conclusion: The findings of this study revealed that corrective actions is necessary after the occurrence of occupational incidents. Attending training courses and having an occupational accident experience had no positive impact on promoting culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents.

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Introduction: The Total Quality Safety Management (TQSM) model is a tool used to assess the performance of occupational health and safety (OHS) management. This study evaluated the OHS management performance in two edible oil production factories using the TQSM model.
Material and Methods: A total of 78 OHS-related evaluation criteria across four main areas of the TQSM model were assessed at the Saboos Mazand (Factory 1) and Mino Caspian (Factory 2) factories, located in Mazandaran Province, Iran. The four areas included Total Quality Management (TQM), the ISO 9001 Quality Management System guidelines, the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), and Process Safety Management (PSM). The study population consisted of 20 individuals from each factory, including managers, supervisors, and members of the OHS Committee, all with at least one year of experience in their respective roles. Participants were selected using a convenience sampling method.
Both factories had established active management systems for quality management (ISO 9001), customer satisfaction management (ISO 10002), and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) at the time of the study, reflecting the nature of the industry.
Results: The total scores achieved by Factory 1 and Factory 2 across the four main areas were as follows: 52.11 and 51.8 in the TQM area, 43.94 and 45.5 in the QMS-ISO 9001 area, 45.23 and 46.45 in the VPP area, and 30.22 and 30.06 in the PSM area. The overall scores obtained in the TQSM model were 171.51 for Factory 1 and 173.81 for Factory 2, corresponding to 54.97% and 55.7% of the maximum achievable score, respectively. No significant difference was observed between the mean scores across the four areas of the TQSM model for the two factories (p > 0.05).
Conclusion: Both factories exhibited an overall average performance level in OHS management. The evaluation criteria across the four areas of the TQSM model indicated weak to moderate conditions in the assessed subareas. Effectively using this model highlighted the organizational and operational areas requiring increased effort and focus to enhance OHS management performance in both factories.