Measurement of the workplace safety climate among hospital female nurses in Japan

Abstract

Aims Workplace safety climate has garnered attention as a factor encouraging organizational error management. We aimed to devise an instrument to measure this climate and examine the instrument’s reliability and validity for hospital nurses. We also examined the association between this instrument and work environment, behavior, mental health, and nurses’ attributes.
Methods The participants were hospital nurses in a public hospital in Japan. We conducted a survey involving a self-administered questionnaire. The survey items were about the workplace safety climate and various other parameters of the work environment, behavior, and mental health. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed for instrument validation ; internal consistency and item-total (I-T) correlation analyses were also performed. The factors relating to the workplace safety climate were examined by Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients, one-way ANOVA, and t-test.
Results The workplace safety climate scale was supported by a five-factor structure. Confirmatory factor analysis of a partially revised model resulted in a 0.917 CFI and a 0.067 RMSEA, indicating a good fit. The workplace safety climate scale was negatively correlated with experiences of incidents not being reported and mental health.
Conclusion The workplace safety climate scale was shown to be a valid and reliable instrument. This study suggested that a healthy workplace safety climate may reduce deleterious behaviors and help improve mental health.