Working hours, job stress, work satisfaction, and accident rates among medical practitioners and allied personnel

Predictors of accident behavior among German medical staff revealed that work-related injuries/accidents experienced during a recent 12-month period were significantly related to working hours per week, distance from home to practice, number of dependent children, gender, and job-related stress. The average yearly number of car accidents was predicted by age and number of working hours. Furthermore, driving accidents going to or coming from work during the last year was determined by working climate, hours of work, length of lunchtime break, distance traveled to and from work, number of dependent children, and gender. Physicians working in excess of 48 hours per week displayed significantly more driving accidents but not work-related accidents, and they reported significantly higher levels of job-related stress than those colleagues working fewer than 48 hours per week. The implications of these results are discussed in the framework on risk management in the health services.     

Parent Care in the Context of Women's Multiple Roles

This article addresses the multiple roles held by women involved in parent care and the ways in which these roles affect the women's well-being. Research on women's roles (including that of caregiver) has been guided by two opposing perspectives, the scarcity hypothesis and the expansion hypothesis. Findings from our studies of role quality, role combinations, and role spillover have provided abundant evidence that the lives of these women cannot be easilycaptured by either the scarcity or the expansion hypothesis alone.     

Organizational response to recommendations based on a study of stress among correctional officers

A study was recently commissioned by the South Australian Government to study the nature and sources of stress among correctional (prison) officers. The paper reports on the key variables found to have significant predictive effects on strain (a composite measure comprising psychological distress, physical ill-health symptoms, job dissatisfaction, and work-home conflict). These included demographic variables (length of service, finances), personal variables (negative affectivity), work environment variables (work role ambiguity, institutional relationship concerns, inmate concerns, worktime concerns, low autonomy, and low involvement), and emotional suppression. Recommendations were formulated including: the appointment of a full-time mental health counselor, organizational and individual strategies aimed to improve supervisor support and management training, greater participation in organizational decision making, and post-shift debriefing. It was also suggested that in selecting correctional officers those displaying high levels of negative affectivity should be screened out. Finally, it was recommended that intervention should target the most vulnerable individuals, including shiftworkers, officers who had been employed in the organization the longest, officers currently on stress leave and officers, who have previously been on stress leave and have returned to work. The paper reports on the organizational response to the recommendations and the implications of the study are discussed in the context of ongoing surveillance and evaluation of the impact of intervention strategies.     

Managerial stress: Is work really the cause?

It is widely accepted that managerial work is stressful, but there has been little research into the events that contribute to this stress. The current study identifies the most stressful recent events for a sample of 572 managers from 41 organizations, and finds that the greater proportion of events are work-related. The breakdown of a marriage or relationship is described as most important and emotionally disturbing, and is associated with the greatest increase in symptoms. Generally, however, work events are considered of greater importance and emotional disturbance than nonwork events, and are associated with greater increases in symptoms. Organizational issues are particularly problematic, and provide opportunities for systemwide intervention.     

Work,stress, and well-being

Work-related stress may lead to injuries and psychological disorders. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has identified psychological disorders as one of the ten leading work-related diseases and injuries during the 1980s (Sauter, Murphy, & Hurrell, 1990). This article sets out a framework, strategy, and recommendations for enhancing stress management skills and the psychological well-being of individuals in occupational environments. Central to the strategy are attention to work design variables, such as control, uncertainty, conflict, and task demands, surveillance of psychological disorders in the workplace, education of managers and workers concerning psychological well-being and stress in the workplace, and treatment of individuals in distress.     

EVALUATION OF A REINFORCEMENT PROCEDURE FOR ACCELERATING WORK RATE IN A SELF-PACED COURSE1

Students in a self-paced child development course were assigned to one of seven groups. One bonus point, which contributed toward the student's final grade, was given for each unit completed during a specified two-week period. In a combined baseline-reversal design, bonus points could be earned at different times for each group, and some groups had weeks without bonus points interspersed between bonus weeks. All seven groups and 78% of individual students completed units at a faster rate during bonus periods than during the balance of the semester. For the 58 students completing the course, mean units per week during bonus periods was 2.40 (SD = 1.60); for the balance of the semester mean units per week was 0.96 (SD = 0.37). Awarding bonus points for a limited period early in the term appears to be a useful procedure for increasing rates during this period in which rates are typically low. Although similar effects have been reported by others (e.g., Miller, Weaver, and Semb, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1974, 7 , 87–91), the advantage of the present procedure is that the increase in rate is accomplished by means of reinforcement for high rates rather than punishment (low grades or forced withdrawal) for low rates.     

A PERFORMANCE-BASED LOTTERY TO IMPROVE RESIDENTIAL CARE AND TRAINING BY INSTITUTIONAL STAFF

Two experiments were conducted on four units of a residential facility for the multiply-handicapped retarded in an attempt to improve daily care and training services. Experiment I compared the effects of two procedures in maintaining the work performance of attendants, using an A-B design on two units. One procedure consisted of implementing specific staff-resident assignments, the other consisted of allowing attendants who had met performance criteria to be eligible for a weekly lottery in which they could win the opportunity to rearrange their days off for the following week. Results showed that the lottery was a more effective procedure as measured by the per cent of time attendants engaged in predefined target behaviors, and by their frequency of task completion in several areas of resident care. Experiment II replicated and extended these results to the area of work quality on two additional units, using a multiple-baseline design. The performance lottery was found to be an effective economical procedure that could be implemented by supervisory staff on a large scale.     

Locus of control,perceived responsibility for prior fate,and helping behavior

One-hundred-and-sixty adolescents participated in two studies designed to investigate the relationship between $\text{I}\text{E}$ and helping behavior as mediated by the perceived cause of another's need. In the first study, Ss were given the opportunity to help, either “indirectly” or “directly,” a supervisor who had been over- or underpaid in a prior similar task. Internals helped more in the “direct” help than the “indirect” help conditions but their helping behavior and their perceptions of their supervisors were not consistent. The perceptions of the externals were relatively consistent with their greater help of the “overpaid” supervisor. In study 2, the Ss were given additional information to increase the possibility of their making causal attributions as a function of the supervisor's prior fate. Once again, the external subjects' helping behavior reflected their perception of their supervisor's merit. The internal subjects exhibited relatively little helping behavior regardless of their supervisors' prior fate or perceived competence.     

Interreinforcement time, work time, and the postreinforcement pause

Six rats were trained with food deliveries contingent upon their pressing a lever and holding it down for fixed, cumulative durations. Hold requirements were varied from 7.5 seconds to 120 seconds. Lever holding was maintained reliably at hold requirements as long as 30 seconds to 105 seconds for different rats. At longer hold requirements, lever holding was erratic and tended to occur only early in sessions. At shorter and intermediate requirements, the patterns of lever holding resembled those of responding under fixed-ratio schedules for discrete responses, with breaks in responding immediately after reinforcement alternating with relatively continuous lever holding until the next reinforcement. At longer hold requirements, postpause lever holding frequently was interrupted with additional pauses. The duration of postreinforcement pauses increased linearly with the scheduled hold requirement. However, for five of six rats, the hold requirement, which represents the actual time spent lever holding per reinforcer, accounted for somewhat less variance in pause duration than did interreinforcement time.