Background: There is global concern about the impact of lifestyle related diseases which have been on a steady increase in recent years. Poor nutrition, reduced physical activity and cigarette smoking have been documented as the main lifestyle behaviors that result in an increase in prevalence of the three most common occurring chronic diseases of lifestyle namely: diabetes, hypertension and cardiac diseases. Healthcare workers are frontline personnel and are seen as role models by their family, friends and the community they serve. It is therefore important that positive healthy lifestyle behaviors are practiced and encouraged by healthcare workers themselves. Objectives: To develop an initial descriptive profile of hospital employees with regards to their general knowledge, attitudes and practices about healthy lifestyles and to make appropriate recommendations to the hospital management on how the workplace can support the adoption of healthy lifestyles. Methods: The study was conducted at one health institution using the permanently employed staff as the study population. An exploratory descriptive study design was used in context of the precede-proceed planning framework. Self-administered questionnaires and consent forms were distributed in English and isiZulu. Collection boxes were placed in all wards and departments. Data was captured using the SPSS version 13 statistical package. Results: The response rate was 42%. Respondents were classified into the administrative, general staff and health professional categories. There was a significant difference (p=0.03) between the staff body mass index and their weight perception. Knowledge and attitude had mean indices of greater than 70% and the practice indices were lower for all three categories at less than 45%. A significant difference was found between certain staff categories in the knowledge and attitude indices but no significant difference existed in their practices. Conclusion: All categories of staff possessed adequate knowledge and attitudes but this is not transferred into positive health promoting practices. The possibility of workplace health promoting interventions was well supported by staff especially with regards to healthier meal choices at the staff dining room and an onsite gym facility. The main limitations of the study were the non-standardized data collection tool, and the poor response rate, which make the generalization of the study findings difficult. / Thesis (M.PH.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008.

No abstract available. / Thesis (MMed)-University of Natal, Durban, 1993.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to describe staff nurses' perceptions of their power bases in their work environment. Power, the capacity to set conditions, make decisions and take action that influences others, is an increasingly important issue within the nursing profession. In the nursing literature, nurses have been encouraged to consider the power to influence nursing care as an attainable goal and a necessary element in the change process. Empowering staff nurses may become a strategy for coping with the nursing manpower shortage. However, research about nursing power has focused on the nurse manager and little is written about staff nurses' perception of their power. A grounded theory research design was used to collect and analyze data. Data were collected through interviews of nine staff nurses in a 369 bed British Columbia community hospital. A comparative content analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that the staff nurse participants were able to recognize certain factors in their work environment that impacted on their sense of power. The nature of nurses' work and the communication of information were found to be the most significant factors. The communication of information was perceived to positively influence nurses' sense of power, while the nature of nurses' work was found to limit nurses' sense of power. Nurses' lack of control over client care was found to contribute to a sense of powerlessness and was linked to units using team nursing. The eight power bases outlined in Randolph's framework, were useful as a basis for describing the staff nurses' perceptions of their organizational power bases. The staff nurses studied were found to have the most affinity for referent, expert, information, and connection power bases. These nurses were found to have the least affinity for reward, coercion, legitimate, and resource power bases. Primary nursing was found to enhance legitimate power while team nursing was found to enhance connection power. The source of power most frequently mentioned by the nurse participants was personal power in relation to oneself. This did not fit into Randolph's framework and was not well defined. This has implications for nursing since support for the professional nature of nurses' work was found to strenghthen nurses' sense of personal power. Knowledge about the perceptions described by the subjects in this investigation provides information to assist nurses' to identify power bases that they may not recognize. As well, increased understanding about staff nurses' perceptions of power should enable nursing administration to identify strategies for retaining nurses and enhancing client care. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

This research explores whether a firm's psychosocial stressors contribute to strains or outcomes important to the organization. The psychosocial stressors chosen for study include: role conflict and ambiguity, workload (qualitative and quantitative), participative decision making, autonomy, and security. Independent variables were the emotional strains of job satisfaction and job commitment. The independent variables for behavioral strains included injury, lost days, workers' compensation claims, and absenteeism. Three moderators: age, gender, and social support were evaluated for interaction effects. The study sampled 77 occupationally injured and 81 non-injured employees from one medium sized Army community hospital. This study uses multivariate hierarchical multiple set regression as its principal analytical method. The hierarchial procedure orders the sets into an a priori hierarchy and enters each set sequentially from the hierarchy, evaluating the increase in $\rm R\sp2.$ The results suggest that psychosocial stressors are significant variables to consider when investigating workers' emotional and behavioral strains. For example, age, participation, and satisfaction were found statistically significant in differentiating between the occupationally injured and the non-injured samples. The study also found that ambiguity, participation, and autonomy influenced emotional strains. Additionally, age and social support appear to moderate the relationship between some psychosocial factors and emotional and behavioral strains. Age moderated the relationship with only emotional strains, while social support moderated both emotional and behavioral strains. Further, social support was found to have a main effect on the emotional strains of satisfaction and commitment, but not on any behavioral ones. Age was found to have a direct effect on the behavioral strains of workers' compensation claims. Finally, although not statistically significant when entered as a set and evaluated using the statistical analysis techniques in this study, a relationship between age and workers' compensation claims and qualitative workload and absenteeism were suggested. The economic and human costs associated with occupational injury are staggering. These findings suggest that attention to psychosocial factors within control of the employer, can promote good management outcomes, improve employee quality of worklife, and contain costs.

No description available.

AIM The aim of the study was to conduct a process evaluation of the implementation of the HIV/AIDS counselling and treatment program (HCT) for employees to ensure the delivery of standardised, high quality and ethical HIV counselling and testing services at a selected Regional Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal. METHOD A quantitative, non-experimental descriptive evaluative design was used to conduct the study. The study consisted of a two (2) questionnaire survey of a sample of 140 participants; One for the staff working in the HCT clinic (n=8) to evaluate the implementation of the HCT activities and the other for the staff that are employed at the selected public hospital (n=132) to evaluate their knowledge, attitudes and practise towards the HCT program. A checklist of the venue was also completed to evaluate the resources available at the HCT clinic. Informed consent was obtained from each participant. SPSS version 19 was used for data analysis. RESULTS The study revealed that the implementation practises of the HCT program were not according to the National Policy for HIV Counselling and Testing Guidelines (Department of Health, 2009) with regards to the availability of resources at the HCT clinic such as HIV test kits, chairs, gloves and sharps containers were available. Privacy was maintained while resources including condoms; directions such as posters to the clinic; pamphlets and reading material were unavailable. Nurse’s knowledge and attitude was neutral. There were no correlations between nurses that attended a HIV course and those that did not. The distribution of knowledge was the same across all categories of experience and level of education. The majority of nurses had an HIV test voluntarily and found out the results. The finding of the study does not indicate whether or not the HIV test was done at the staff HCT clinic or elsewhere. A small minority reported that they tested for employer and insurance purposes. A significant proportion of participants did not test because they were afraid that a person they know may test them and tell others and also because they did not think that the medical and nursing staff kept their testing information confidential. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS For the HCT program to be successfully implemented, resources and supplies must be available at the HCT clinic should an employee wish to use its services. It is recommended that funds be made available and budgeted for to increase the supplies of HIV test kits; provide condoms, books, pamphlets and reading material at the clinic. The researcher also recommends courses be offered to nurses that are interested; include HIV/AIDS courses in the curriculum of nurses attending the college; provide in-service education/training for employees regarding the HCT program, its resources and activities; provide anti-retro viral treatment (ART) to employees at the HCT clinic in order to decrease untimely AIDS deaths. / Thesis (M.N.)-Unversity of KwaZulu-Natal.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

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No description available.