Co-Creating an Occupational Health Intervention within the Construction Industry in Sweden. Stakeholder Perceptions of the Process and Output

One way to prevent work-related stress, is to implement primary occupational health interventions aimed at improving the psychosocial work environment. However, such interventions have shown a limited effect, often due to implementation failure and poor contextual fit. Co-creation, where researchers, together with end-users and other relevant stakeholders, develop the intervention is increasingly encouraged. However, few studies have evaluated the effects of co-created interventions, and participants’ experience of the co-creation process. This is one of the first studies evaluating stakeholder perceptions of co-creating an occupational health intervention. We applied a thematic analysis, with data from 12 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in the co-creation. Our results show that the respondents, in general, were satisfied with engaging in the co-creation, and they reported an increased awareness regarding risk factors of stress and how these should be handled. Additionally, the respondents described trust in the intervention activities and a good fit into the context. The study indicates that co-creating occupational health interventions can enhance the implementation and the contextual fit.

Health-relevant personality traits in relation to adherence to a web-based occupational health promotion and stress management intervention

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible associations between health-relevant personality traits and adherence; and if these traits predict adherence to a web-based occupational health intervention.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 563 participants were analyzed using the Health-relevant Personality Inventory. Adherence measures were: logins, utilization of self-help exercises and time spent logged in.FindingsHigher levels of antagonism (a facet of agreeableness) and impulsivity (a facet of conscientiousness) correlated to fewer logins, and higher levels of negative affectivity (a facet of neuroticism) and impulsivity correlated to a higher utilization of self-help exercises. Alexithymia (a facet of openness) negatively predicted self-help exercise utilization and antagonism was a positive predictor. Negative affectivity was a positive predictor of time spent logged in to the intervention. There were sex-related differences in outcomes.Originality/valueThis is the first study to investigate health-relevant personality traits in relation to adherence to a web-based occupational health intervention. The practical implications are that intervention developers could benefit from taking personality into consideration to better understand and improve adherence.

EFFECTIVENESS OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH INTERVENTION PROGRAMME ON WORK PLACE ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND STRESS MANAGEMENT AMONG NURSES IN SOUTH-WEST NIGERIA

The nurse’s role has long been regarded as stress filled based on the physical labour human suffering, work hours, staffing and interpersonal relationships that are central to the work nurses do. Occupational stress is thus, a recognized problem among health care workers in general. Nursing has therefore been identified as an occupation that has high level of risks and stress in the work place environment. Therefore the study investigated the effects of occupational health intervention programme on environmental risks and stress management of staff nurses in South-west Nigeria. A pretest, posttest, control group, quasi-experimental research design was adopted. Two hundred and twenty five (225) respondents were selected for the study. One hundred and twelve (112) respondents were used as experimental group while one hundred and thirteen (113) respondents were used as control group. Fish bowl method was used for grouping the participants into experimental and control groups respectively. A self-developed questionnaire tagged ‘Occupational Health Intervention Programme, Environmental Risks and Stress Management Questionnaire OHIPERSMQ’ with a reliability coefficient of 0.88 was used. The experimentation lasted 8 weeks. Analysis was done using ANCOVA and Multiple Classification Analysis. Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level. Findings revealed that occupational health intervention programme has significant effect on risk management knowledge of staff nurses. The experimental group had mean = 4.44, better than the control group that had mean = 2.92. Also, occupational health intervention programme had significant effect on stress management knowledge of nurses with experimental group mean = 7.78, better than the control group mean = 2.36. Based on these findings, it was recommended that medical social workers should ensure that nurses participate in educational training in skills associated with risk reduction, stress reduction and safety promotion so as to guarantee their wellbeing and good job performance.