Effects of extended work shifts on employee fatigue, health, satisfaction, work/family balance, and patient safety

12-hour shifts are quickly spreading in Europe. From our multivariate analysis concerning 25,924 European nurses, including twenty explanatory variables simultaneously, we found that work schedule itself is not a major determinant factor. Nurses aim to choose or accept night shifts or 12-hour shift in order to reduce their work/home conflicts, however, at the expense of the patient's safety, as well as their own health and safety. Therefore, it is important to develop measures, such as extended child care, association of nurses to the elaboration of their rota, 9- or 10-hour shifts in the afternoon, allowing naps during night shifts, and reduction of changing shifts with short notice. Work schedules must be organized in order to allow time for shift handover, social support and team building.     

Sounding sovereignty: performance and politics in the 1999 Panama Canal handover

The Panama Canal’s handover from US governance to Panamanian sovereignty concluded on 31 December 1999. ‘Patria Entera’ (loosely translated as ‘Whole Homeland’), a state-sponsored open-air concert, commemorated the handover and promulgated new readings of the Panama Canal Zone’s decolonisation process. Concert headliner Rubén Blades deployed repertory and symbolic strategies to counterbalance Panamanians’ ambivalence regarding the handover. ‘Patria Entera’ recast the Panama Canal Zone as an accessible space and narrated the handover as the Panamanian citizenry’s collective inheritance of the Canal and accompanying Zone. Yet the concert’s discursive arc overlooked persistent and emerging challenges.     

The Role of the Nonprofit Sector in Hong Kong's Development

The recent handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China (PRC) brought Hong Kong worldwide attention and scrutiny. In the run up to the handover, the international media prominently featured stories about Hong Kong's freewheeling capitalism and the stability created by its administrative institutions. Lost in the media attention was the role of nonprofit organizations and the voluntary sector in Hong Kong's political and economic development. Although Hong Kong has a vibrant civil society, it has received little attention from scholars. This paper reviews the role of the third sector in Hong Kong's development. Among the issues the paper addresses are the legal codes that govern the creation and operation of nonprofit organizations in Hong Kong, the evidence regarding the role of the nonprofit sector in Hong Kong's development, particularly its relationship to the government and market sectors, and the implications of the 1997 transition for the nonprofit sector's role.     

The struggle for hegemony: the emergence of a counter-public sphere in post-1997 Hong Kong

The present study examines the struggle for hegemony in the public sphere by two different systems, following Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997. It has been postulated that the new media, particularly social media, has become an important public sphere for the citizens of Hong Kong to engage in an anti-hegemonic struggle against China’s discursive encroachment into Hong Kong since 1997. Given that the public platform provided by legacy media has been bought out or coopted by China, new media has begun to serve as a subaltern public sphere to enable resisting the hegemony imposed by China. This was analyzed through a survey conducted as part of this study, which showed that people who are young, read the Apple Daily, have high expectations of local autonomy, and a high regard for press freedom are prone to using social media to obtain their social and political information. This article analyzes the implications of the emergence of a counter-China hegemonic public sphere.     

Post-handover identity: contested cultural bonding between China and Hong Kong

This study examines the formation of Hong Kong identity and its cultural articulation in Chinese identity in the post-handover years. Surveys of Hong Kong identity conducted between 1996 and 2016 demonstrate a set of interlinked yet contradictory findings: (i) the coexistence of both cultural pride in and resistance to cultural icons that represent the Chinese state; (ii) weakening correlations between China and Hong Kong regarding cultural affiliation; and (iii) the growing significance of cultural resistance to China by people who love Hong Kong. The survey results indicate the prevalence of an ambivalent identity in post-handover Hong Kong with regard to the coexistence of opposing attitudes toward Chinese identity. These results provide evidence of the complex cultural bonding between China and Hong Kong in the development of the China–Hong Kong relationship since the handover in 1997.     

CYNICISM ABOUT COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN HONG KONG

ABSTRACT

In Hong Kong, the years since the handover of the territory to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997 have been a dispirited period characterized by open cynicism toward the government. Against this widespread social discontent and dissatisfaction, the government has tried to promote social cohesion and community spirit as a way forward to resolve social conflicts. How people respond to this call for more community involvement and whether they have faith in the ability of community engagement to make a change are questions that should be addressed. This article focuses on cynicism about community engagement in terms of taking part in social services and community affairs, and explains the variation in this attitude. It is found that perceptions of social disadvantage, social trust, and the presence of dependent children have significant effects on cynical attitudes toward community engagement. This article is concluded by an argument for a “broader” definition of community responsibility that includes the fulfillment of family and work obligations, and the avoidance of passing moral judgment on burdened individuals with limited resources.     

Assessing safety culture in child welfare: Evidence from Tennessee

States continue to search for ways to prevent harm to children and families within the child welfare system. Recently, states and researchers alike have looked to other high hazard sectors that have experienced harm-free performance by creating and sustaining a strong safety culture – an organizational focus and priority on safety. Safety culture is enabled by leader actions to prioritize safety (safety climate) and make it safe for employees to take an interpersonal risk (psychological safety). Safety culture is enacted by behaviors for detecting and correcting errors and unexpected events (safety organizing) and recognizing how stress affects work performance (stress recognition). However, despite their conceptual relevance and practical promise for child welfare, these and other safety culture constructs have yet to be subjected to rigorous empirical analysis in child welfare. This study draws on 1719 employees in the state of Tennessee's child welfare system to examine whether safety culture can be reliably and validly measured, can characterize organizations across a state (i.e., employees have shared perceptions of the safety culture), and be linked to relevant outcomes (e.g., employee emotional exhaustion). Our results confirm that components of safety culture can be reliably and validly measured in child welfare, perceptions of culture are shared within each of the Tennessee child welfare system's twelve regions, and that safety culture is generally associated with lower levels of employee emotional exhaustion, but also indicate that there is considerable opportunity for improvement as the levels of safety culture are low relative to other sectors.     

An Implementation of Protocol Analysis and the Silent Dog Method in the Area of Behavioral Safety

Recent research has demonstrated that conducting safety observations increases the safety performance of the observer. The purpose of this study was to help determine whether observers make self-verbalizations regarding their own safety performance and whether these reports are functionally related to safety performance. In order to answer these questions two experiments were conducted using both protocol analysis and the silent dog method. The objective of Experiment 1 was (a) to determine whether safety performance with continuous, concurrent talk-aloud procedures is functionally equivalent to safety performance without talk-aloud reports, and (b) to determine whether that safety performance is altered when participants are presented with a distracter task. The goal of Experiment 2 was to determine whether the safety-related verbalizations made by Experiment 1 participants were task-relevant and functionally related to safety performance. The results from both Experiments 1 and 2 provide support for the existence of a functional relationship between safety-related verbalizations and increases in safety performance.     

日本食品供应链管理模式的经验借鉴

日本食品供应链管理的重点放在发展食品安全追踪方面;而海外进口食品的安全,则主要依靠严格的进口检验检疫制度和综合商社通过供应链管理来控制。日本以农协体系为基础、以农产品流通模式和食品安全管理模式为特征的食品供应链管理模式,符合中国食品供应链管理的发展条件,对中国食品安全管理具有很强的借鉴意义。     

Management commitment to safety and health in residential construction: HomeSafe spending trends 1991-1999

The support of good management is fundamental to the success of any safety and health program. Residential construction is a high-risk industry requiring significant commitment by management to impact day-to-day safety and health challenges. Investigators have evaluated management practices and spending trends in a cohort of 228 residential homebuilders in the Denver metro area of Colorado. Findings suggest that companies significantly increased dollars allocated to support safety and health practices between 1991 and 1999. In addition, the HomeSafe Pilot Program has positively impacted financial commitments of partner companies. Resource allocations were significantly greater for specific expense categories when comparing pre to post HomeSafe intervention. This paper presents data on the use of written safety and health programs, safety committees, and workers compensation premium cost containment certification, as well as allocations to safety incentive programs (SIP), personal protective equipment (PPE), other safety equipment (OSE), and safety training (ST).     

ARE AUTOMOBILE SAFETY REGULATIONS WORTH THE PRICE: EVIDENCE FROM USED CAR MARKETS

The value consumers place on automobile safety regulations can be determined by examining the instantaneous effects changes in these regulations have on used vehicle prices. If consumers value safety regulations more than their cost, used vehicle prices decrease in response to a change in safety regulations. If consumers place at least some value on the safety induced by safety regulations, a change in emission control regulations will have a greater positive impact on used automobile prices than a change in safety regulations. Empirical results strongly support the latter case and, surprisingly, offer some support for the former case. (JEL L51, L62)     

Efficient and effective learning for safety from incidents

Learning from incidents is important for improving safety. Many companies spend a great deal of time and money on such learning procedures. The objectives of this paper are to present some early results from a project aimed at revealing weaknesses in the procedures for learning from incidents and to discuss improvements in these procedures, especially in chemical process industries. The empirical base comes from a project assessing organizational learning and the effectiveness of the different steps of the learning cycle for safety and studying relations between safety-specific transformational leadership, safety climate, trust, safety-related behavior and learning from incidents. The results point at common weaknesses in the organizational learning, both in the horizontal learning (geographical spread) and in vertical learning (double-loop learning). Furthermore, the effectiveness in the different steps of the learning cycle is low due to insufficient information in incident reports, very shallow analyses of reports, decisions that focus at solving the problem only at the place where the incident took place, late implementations and weak solutions. Strong correlations with learning from incidents were found for all safety climate variables as well as for safety-related behaviors and trust. The relationships were very strong for trust, safety knowledge, safety participation and safety compliance.     

Young urban adults' heterosexual risk encounters and perceived risk and safety: a structured diary study

Using diary methods, the current study explored characteristics of young adults' sexual risk interactions over a two-week period and the associations between perceived risk and safety with regard to these sexual risk behaviors. We screened all participants to ensure a moderate to high scores on an HIV knowledge measure. Men (n = 44) and women ( n = 48) enrolled at an inner-city college collected diary data, generating reports of 440 sexual occasions over a 2-week period (1,278 person-days). Despite participation in sexual risk activities, including highly inconsistent condom use during intercourse, participants uniformly reported high safety and little to no risk. Only women's perceptions of safety (not risk) were associated with condom use, men's perceptions of both safety and risk were unrelated. Ratings of safety and risk appeared to operate independently for the most part. Sex with new partners and new sexual activity were associated with both judgments of greater risk and lower safety were associated for men only. These results add to the growing evidence that young people fail to integrate fully their general knowledge regarding HIV risk into their personal interactions. This study has implications for the development of cognitive models around sexual decision-making for young adults at risk for HIV and may provide insight into the contextual features of sexual interactions associated with young people's perceptions of risk and safety.     

Designing a safety program for a college health service.

Although accidents are the leading cause of death among college students, literature about developing student health safety programs is limited. In this article, we present preliminary recommendations based on literature review, epidemiologic data, and Nominal Group Process (NGP) activities, for developing university student safety programs. Our recommendations include appointing a coordinator to oversee all on-campus safety activities, providing for university-wide education programs dealing with alcohol and drug use, promoting personal safety efforts in areas such as family violence and rape prevention, and encouraging students to use safe transportation alternatives.     

CONSUMER DEMAND FOR VEHICLE SAFETY: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Although numerous studies on the effects of vehicle safety regulation exist, few are devoted to consumer demands for vehicle safety. This study uses an extensive data set combining vehicle specific information with responses from a national household survey of new car buyers to estimate individual demand for safety. It finds, ceteris paribus, purchase probability rises with an increase in safety features. In particular, an index of vehicle crashworthiness is a strong determinant of purchase decisions. The results favor a policy of posting crash test results and suggest that passive restraint systems enhance the likelihood of purchasing a given model.     

Micro-simulation of households: a new tool to assess the impact on society of food safety policies

Public concerns about the risk from food hazards have spread in recent years, boosted by a number of well-publicized food scares. As a result, food safety issues are high on the policy agenda in Europe and elsewhere, and a range of policies have been developed to deal with them. The paper illustrates and makes a case for the use of micro-simulation models as support for better economic assessment of food policies. When households deal with food safety issues they can show heterogeneous behaviors, and micro-simulation can provide a useful tool to take into account this heterogeneity. However, to the author's knowledge, no attempt to use micro-simulation in the analysis of food safety policies has taken place so far. After an illustration of the way economists evaluate food safety policies, micro-simulation methodologies are introduced, stressing their potentiality for the assessment of food safety policies.     

Examining the effectiveness of health and safety committees and representatives: a review

The establishment of a health and safety committee in the workplace and/or the appointment of an elected health and safety representative is believed to foster employee participation and consultation in the workplace. Despite an emphasis within the Australian occupational health and safety legislation towards employee participation in relation to health and safety issues, there is little known about the effectiveness of the strategies used to involve workers in health and safety matters in the workplace. There is anecdotal evidence published in relation to the implementation of health and safety committees and their effectiveness in the Australian workplace. Few opinions however are substantiated by empirical evidence. Significantly more research has been conducted on the role of health and safety representatives in Australia. This paper presents the findings of a review of the literature and identifies the factors that are considered to impact on the effectiveness of workplace health and safety committees and representatives. Several factors are described as being fundamental to the effective performance of committees and representatives. These factors include management commitment, communication, training and information, union involvement, the infrastructure of an organisation, committee processes and the involvement of professional experts. It is concluded that the effectiveness of health and safety committees in Australia is unexplored and it is unknown if these committees achieve the purpose for which they were established. Recommendations are made for future research to be conducted to test the current anecdotal evidence and assumptions associated with the operation and effectiveness of health and safety committees.     

The practical potential of self-advocacy for improving safety outcomes for school-aged workers

Young workers are over-represented in workplace injury statistics and there is growing interest in addressing their vulnerability and safety exposure. Such concerns have been raised within a broader discursive framework of responsibilisation which has seen a transfer of responsibility for workplace safety from employer to worker. This article examines the potential for self-advocacy as a strategy for improving the safety of young workers through the provision of resources to articulate and act on workplace rights. The study utilises data derived from 48 group interviews involving 216 high school students (13–16 years of age) at 19 high schools in Queensland, Australia, who were asked to discuss their knowledge and experience of workplace rights and responsibilities. The limitations of the safety self-advocacy approach are explored, including the social, developmental and organisational issues that might affect the ability or willingness of school-aged workers to self-advocate. The findings reveal that the notion of self-advocacy is internalised by young people before they even enter the formal labour market but that in practice, attempts by young people to enact rights to safety are often dismissed or undermined.     

FIGURES OF HOPE AND THE FILMIC IMAGINARY OF JIANGHU IN CONTEMPORARY HONG KONG CINEMA

Through an extensive allegorical reading of films, this paper attempts to capture a certain cultural form of imagination in Hong Kong during the transitional period leading up to the historical handover of power in 1997. Dwelling on the world of signification conjured up through what I call the jianghu filmic imaginary,the analysis focuses on the ideological and utopian impulses registered in relation to a whole emotional complex of anxiety, bewilderment and despair in the works of some highly creative local filmmakers of the genre: Ching Siu-Tong, Ann Hui, Tsui Hark and Wong KarWai. The study draws theoretically from Castoriadis's notion of the social imaginary and Bloch's aesthetics of hope, to focus on the textual and contextual re-constructions of a number of very unconventional martial arts swordplay (wuxia) films made in Hong Kong in the last two decades: namely, Tsui's Butterfly Murders (1979), Hui's Romance of Book and Sword (1987), Ching/Tsui's Swordsman II (1992), and Wong's Ashes of Time (1994). By identifying the ideological and affective moments in the filmic imaginary,I want to trace what has been left in a ruined culture for utopian longings, and point to the presence/absence of ‘hope’ as the cultural imagination for an unknown and unknowable future (beyond 1997). It is my contention that an understanding of that peculiar form of popular imaginary at the unusual juncture of Hong Kong's history can begin with a critical attempt to cope with this subtle practice of hope, so as to recognize (or reject) it as mediation in the process of our collective cultural crisis, anticipation and identification.     

From safety contract to safety agreement

1. Confusion and controversy continue to surround the definition and use of safety contracts. 2. A safety agreement based on Orlando's Nursing Theory may be a more practical, concise, and nurse-patient friendly means to promote patient safety. 3. The key ingredients in a safety agreement are identifying patients' immediate safety needs and decreasing patients' immediate distress related to safety through the nurse-patient relationship. 4. The value of a safety agreement lies not in the tool itself but in its promotion of a nurse-patient relationship that involves communication and collaboration.