pISSN: 2008-5109
eISSN: 2008-5435
Editor-in-Chief:
Mohammadreza Monazzam Esmaeilpour, PhD.
Vol 10 No 3 (2018)
Published:
2018-08-30
Original Article(s)
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The quality of nursing work life is an important index for assessing the professional health of nurses and providing tailored care services to patients. The study investigates the role of work-family conflict and self-regulation in predicting the quality of work-life among nurses. In this retrospective cross-sectional study, 230 nurses were selected randomly from public and private hospitals. They were asked to fill out Work-related Quality of Life Scale-2, Work-Family Conflict Scale, and Self-Regulation Questionnaire. Moreover, structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data by SPSS-19 and LISREL-8.80 software. The results showed that the model had a good fit to the observed data (RMSEA=0.06, GFI=0.93, AGFI=0.87, NFI=93, CFI=95, IFI=95, and P-value=.073) and the final model was verified. The results also revealed that “behavior-based and time-based work-family conflicts”, “assessing the plan’s effectiveness”, “searching for options”, and “implementing the plan” could significantly predict “stress at work”, “general well-being”, “working conditions”, employees’ engagement”, “job career satisfaction”, and “work-home interference” (p<0.05). It is indispensable to design tailored programs and professional health plans for improving family-work interference and self-regulatory actions, as two leading causes for the quality of nursing work life.
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Fumed silica, due to the thixotropic properties and low thermal conductivity, is used in insulation products. Exposure to crystalline silica is of most concern and there is also evidence that exposure to nanometer-sized fumed silica may lead to adverse health outcomes. Workers’ exposure to aerosolized fumed silica and other potentially hazardous materials are commonly assessed using direct-reading instruments. These instruments often contain an aerosol pre-separator cyclone, which by dispersing agglomerated particles, may cause variations in the reading values. This study investigates the effect of these cyclones on the measurements by comparing three instruments for airborne fumed silica that was generated using manual and automatic manipulation methods of manual pouring and automatic stirring. The results from these experiments showed that the measured concentration of nano-sized fumed silica increased with the use of cyclone. This may attribute to the residual particles remained inside the cyclone or attached on its wall in the particle separation process, which needs to be considered in and the corresponding correction should be made when measuring the concentration of fumed silica with an instrument that uses a cyclone as a pre-separator.
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Nurses have always been considered as a unique working group because of the physically and mentally demanding tasks they bear at work. Such a working condition exposes them to a high risk of fatigue, which could influence their work ability. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between work ability index (WAI) and fatigue of critical care nurses in a military hospital. In this descriptive and cross-sectional study, 101 nurses (71 females and 30 males) of critical care units filled out both the Persian version of WAI and nurses’ fatigue questionnaires. The nurses were selected from three general hospitals of Tehran by cluster sampling method. The Pearson correlation test was used for investigating the relationship between two quantitative variables, and all the statistical analyses were performed by SPSS v. 21 software. The nurses’ average age was 24.5 years old (±SD=±3.6), and the mean of work experience was 9 years (±SD=±4.13). The mean work ability of the nurses was 40.01 (±SD=±4.05), indicating “good work ability”. Fatigue was found in 46.19% of the participants, and the nurses’ fatigue was mainly of mental type (29.8%). There was a significant negative correlation (-0.57) between the scores of WAI and total fatigue (p < 0.001). The negative correlation between WAI and fatigue shows that WAI and fatigue score could be a good predictor of health and quality of work life. Identifying the influential factors of nurses’ work ability and fatigue would help to improve the work condition of critical care nurses.
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Traffic violations and aggression are often regarded as social issues with important social and economic consequences. The present study investigated the potential contribution of demographic variables, driving anger, and aggression on the prediction of aggressive driving behaviors. The sample population consisted of 168 male drivers with an age range of 19–30 years old and the average driving experience of 9 years. All participants filled out the self-reported scales that assess driving anger, aggression dimension, and driving behaviors. Based on the participants' responses to the trait-anger dimensions in Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, they were re-categorized in three driving anger categories of high-trait-anger, medium-trait-anger, and low-trait-anger. All of the participants had a driving certificate. The results of this research indicate that: (1) for almost all variables, the effect of anger was significant, (2) anger situation had a contribution in the prediction of lapse, errors, and violations, (3) demographic variables, driving anger, and aggression were all involved in a complementary manner in predicting the driving behavior, and (4) aggression was the best predictor of the violations. Future research is recommended to continue to investigate the effect of various environmental, social, psychological, and personality factors on risky driving behaviors in order to identify appropriate treatment and prevention strategies for this societal concern.
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Storage tanks that contain a wide range of chemicals, compressed gas, and other hydrocarbons play an important role in the process industries. Gas release from these tanks can lead to catastrophic events that can lead to significant financial, human, and environmental consequences. In this study, a compressed gas tank was chosen as the case unit under study. The gas release was taken into consideration as the top event for quantitative and qualitative analyses of the probable consequences using the Event Tree Analysis (ETA) and Bayesian network (BN) model. According to the ETA analyses, 6 safety barriers were identified that could prevent the top event and the success and failure of these barriers led to the 10 final consequences. Among the identified consequences, near misses were known to be the most probable consequences of the top event. The results showed that the presence of safety barriers could significantly reduce the consequences of the occurrence of the top event. BN could fix the static problem of the quantitative risk analysis and provide the capability to determine the most probable consequences of the top event.
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Reported exposures to hazardous fumes and gases from the welding process indicate the importance of using effective ventilation systems to control these emissions. This study was designated to control the welding contaminants and to utilize the performance of a prototype on-gun system in bench scale. The study evaluated ventilation parameters including exhaust flow rate, capture velocity, and lastly, duct and face velocities for the system of interest. Hood operation was tested at 34.06 standard cubic feet per minute (SCFM). ISO 10882-1 (part 1) method, the gravimetric method, was used to determine the total particle concentration and hood efficiency. The study found that, in general, when the hood face was located at 2 cm from the gas nozzle, capture velocity in arc point reached 140 fpm. By increasing the distance to 4-6 cm, the capture velocity decreased to 100 and 60 fpm, respectively. We concluded that the distance of the hood face from nozzle had a direct effect on capture efficiency. The evaluated hood could reduce exposure risk of welding fumes with a capture efficiency of 77.73% in the hood distance of 2 cm from the nozzle.
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Work-related accidents and illnesses are a great concern in developed countries. Numerous researches have been performed to find an appropriate approach to decrease occupational accidents. This descriptive-analytical study was designed based on the retrospective and field studies to develop a customized model of the safety culture and identify the effective factors of safety culture in a car manufacturing company. In order to present a new customized model of safety culture questionnaire, the study was designed in three phases: 1) Proposing a customized model, 2) Constructing a validated questionnaire, and 3) Conducting a field study. A total number of 619 cases completed the questionnaire (321 injured and 298 uninjured people). Cronbach's alpha of the questionnaire was 0.855. The injured population noticeably acquired more points than the uninjured workers in all items of the questionnaire except for "safety rules and regulations"; though, this difference was statistically significant (P<0.05) only in the 7 items. The correlation between almost all of the safety culture components in the injured and uninjured workers was positive (P<0.05 P <0.001). Developing a customized model and questionnaire for a car manufacturing industry is an important finding of the present study. The results showed that the safety culture of the injured subjects was higher than those uninjured. Therefore, it can be stated that the occupational accident is the milestone for the evaluation of the safety culture.
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Steam boiler is a common primary utility that creates steam by applying heat energy to water in a close system and poses different threats. The present study aimed to identify health, safety, and environmental hazards by implementing Hazard Identification (HAZID) method and Analytical Network Process (ANP). Therefore, the identified hazards were categorized and scored by HAZID method and then, prioritized using ANP. A total number of 58 hazards were identified in 4 categories; of which, 6 hazards were weighted by the super decisions software. According to the results, job stress and cooling system wastewater were recognized as the most and the least important hazards, respectively.
