#0051 An analysis on the relationship between safety awareness and safety behaviors of healthcare professionals, Ankara/Turkey
Playing It Safe: Link between Safety Awareness and Behaviors of Healthcare Professionals in Turkey
Occupational accidents occur fairly often in underdeveloped and developing countries, despite governmental regulations seeking to prevent them. This indicates that the issue is not a technical one but, instead, is caused by individuals. In fact, 90% of all accidents at the workplace are caused by the unsafe behaviors of employees. Therefore, there is a need for organizations to foster a “safety culture” to promote safe behaviors.
The idea was first suggested in the report that was published after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and has existed since. There is a belief that safety culture increases the safety and health of employees at the workplace. What better place to test this idea than hospitals? They are places where potentially hazardous tasks and duties are performed.
Occupational accidents are 34% more likely to occur in the healthcare sector than in any other sector. And surprisingly, it is a sector that is understudied in Turkey, despite many researchers investigating the relationship between safety awareness and safety behaviors in the textile, metal, and manufacturing sectors in the country.
We sought to bridge this gap in scientific literature by examining the relationship between safety awareness and safety behaviors of healthcare professionals in Ankara, Turkey. In our study, we surveyed 418 healthcare workers from the Gülhane Training and Research Hospital between January and March of 2018 to determine the relationship between safety awareness and safety behaviors. Safety awareness was simply defined as the perception of one’s own abilities and responsibilities to avoid risks in workplaces, and safety behavior was considered to be adherence to safety policies and procedures.
Our questionnaire contained 18 questions under three sections: sociodemographic characteristics, safety awareness scale (SAS), and safety behavior scale (SBS). The scales used in the survey were adjudged to be highly reliable by reliability coefficients.
We found that both the safety awareness and safety behavior scores of healthcare professionals were high, their averages being 3.85 ± 0.81 and 3.56 ± 0.82 respectively. A similar trend was observed in the subscales of safety compliance and safety participation. The correlation between safety awareness and safety behavior was positive and statistically significant, giving us reason to believe that safety awareness leads to safety behavior among healthcare professionals in Ankara.
In fact, our analysis indicates that 58% of the safety behaviors were attributable to safety awareness. We recommend promoting safety awareness in educational curricula and in service orientations and trainings to promote occupational safety among employees.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1348-9585.12129
Title of the paper:
An analysis on the relationship between safety awareness and safety behaviors of healthcare professionals, Ankara/Turkey
Authors:
Fatma Uzuntarla, Serhat Kucukali, Yasin Uzuntarla
