When safety climate is not enough: Examining the moderating effects of psychosocial hazards on nurse safety performance

Abstract

Aim To examine the association between components of safety climate and psychosocial hazards with safe work behaviours and test the moderating effects of psychosocial hazards on the safety climate‐safety performance relationships. Background The effects of a strong safety climate on safety performance are well cited, however, the conditions that have an impact on this relationship warrant attention. While the psychosocial hazards commonly reported by nurses are predictors of well‐being and job attitudes, evidence suggests that these may also place boundaries on the effects of safety climate on safe work practices. Design This study used a cross‐sectional design to collect data from 146 nurses. Methods Participants were recruited through convenience sampling and snowball sampling methods in 2017. Nurses completed an online questionnaire and received a $5 e‐gift card as compensation. SPSS v.23 and PROCESS v3.0 were used to analyse the data. Results/Findings A strong safety climate was positively associated with nurses' safety performance. While psychosocial hazards did not predict safety performance, they did moderate the safety climate‐performance relationship. High levels of perceived stressors weakened the association between promoting two‐way safety communication, the use and implementation of procedures to promote safe work practices and management's endorsement of health and safety with safe work performance. Conclusion The positive effects of safety climate on nurses' safety performance are contingent on the levels of psychosocial hazards nurses experience. When aiming to improve safety performance among nurses, it is important for efforts to also focus on the psychosocial conditions of the work environment.

Nurses’ Adherence to Patient Safety Principles: A Systematic Review

“…A work environment characterised by a heavy workload and mental pressure [23,24,70] and frequent disruptions [71] has been implicated in reducing nurses' adherence to safety-related principles. There is an association between patient safety and the nurses' work environment [39,72,73] and implementation of patient-safety principles to prevent errors and adverse events [26,74].…”

Determinants of Occupational Safety Culture in Hospitals and other Workplaces—Results from an Integrative Literature Review

“…We identified 44 studies investigating various determinants of an occupational safety culture . Seventeen studies referred to hospital workplaces [41,44,48,54,56,[62][63][64][65][66][67][69][70][71]80,81,84] and 27 studies were conducted at other workplaces, mostly manufacturing, construction, and other industry sectors [42,43,[45][46][47][49][50][51][52][53]55,[57][58][59][60][61]68,[72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79]82,83].…”

“…The 44 studies were published between 2000 and 2020. Most of the studies applied a cross-sectional research design [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65]68,69,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81]83,84]. We identified four cohort studies using a longitudinal research design [56,67,70,82], and only one study employing a mixed-methods design [66].…”

“…Some individual data, like union membership [80], work engagement [67], and employment status [64,84], were also addressed. Two studies mentioned aspects of psychosocial working conditions (e.g., conflict with others, lack of support, emotional demands, bullying, skills discretion) [62,67].…”

“…. ) [44,48,54,[62][63][64][65][66][67]69,70,80,84], to supervisors (e.g., supervisor safety, supervisor support, supervisor safety leadership . .…”