Level of Safety and Health Activities among Hospital Nurses

This study is to measure the levels of performance with safety and health in nursing activities and to understand the factors affected among hospital nurses. It consists of 120 hospital nurses in 3 general university hospitals located in Seoul, Korea. The tool used in this study was 5 pointed Likert scaled questionnaire which was designed with 44 items followed by in-depth interviews with 8 clinical nurses. Statistical analysis was performed by using PASW 19.0. The reliability of this questionnaire had Cronbach’s a .88. Nine factors were extracted in the Eigen value of 1.2 and cumulative % in 63.39. These factors were named in to ‘Hazardous environment exposure’, ‘Supportive organizational system’, ‘Tight nursing schedule’, ‘Work station’, ‘Physical symptoms’, ‘Safety precaution’, ‘Medical device management’, ‘Physical workload’, and ‘Working stress management’. There were significant differences between practice level with the out-patient department and the ward department of ‘Hazardous environment exposure’, ‘Supportive organizational system’, ‘Tight nursing schedule’, ‘Work station’, and ‘Physical workload’. ‘Tight nursing schedule’ had positive correlations with ‘Hazardous environment exposure’, ‘Physical workload’, ‘Physical symptoms’, ‘Safety precaution’ with significant Pearson correlation coefficients and could be explained with overtime work. Thus, safety and health educational program in managing ‘Hazardous environment exposure’ would be desirable to focus on the work schedule management including overtime work for ward department nurse. It would also be effective in using ‘Supportive organizational system’ for out patient department nurse