Background: Hospitals face an increasing pressure towards efficiency and cost reduction while ensuring patient safety. This warrants a closer examination of the trade-off between production and protection posited in the literature for a high-risk hospital setting (intensive care). Purposes: Based on extant literature and concepts on both safety management and organizational/safety culture, this study investigates to which extent production pressure (i.e., increased staff workload and capacity utilization) and safety culture (consisting of safety climate among staff and safety tools implemented by management) influence the occurrence of medical errors and if/how safety climate and safety tools interact. Methodology / Approach: A prospective, observational, 48-hour cross-sectional study was conducted in 57 intensive care units. The dependent variable is the incidence of errors affecting those 378 patients treated throughout the entire observation period. Capacity utilization and workload were measured by indicators such as unit occupancy, nurse-/physician-to-patient ratios, levels of care, or NEMS scores. The safety tools considered include Critical Incidence Reporting Systems, audits, training, mission statements, SOPs/checklists and the use of barcodes. Safety climate was assessed using a psychometrically validated four-dimensional questionnaire. Linear regression was employed to identify the effects of the predictor variables on error rate, as well as interaction effects between safety tools and safety climate. Findings: Higher workload has a detrimental effect on safety while safety climate - unlike the examined safety tools - has a virtually equal opposite effect. Correlations between safety tools and safety climate as well as their interaction effects on error rate are mostly nonsignificant. Practice Implications: Increased workload and capacity utilization increase the occurrence of medical error; an effect that can be offset by a positive safety climate but not by formally implemented safety procedures and policies. (authors' abstract)

Current tactical networks are oversaturated, often slowing systems down to unusable speeds. Utilizing data collected from major exercises and Operation Iraqi Freedom II (OIF II), a typical model of existing tactical network performance is modeled and analyzed using NETWARS, a DISA sponsored communication systems modeling and simulation program. Optimization technologies are then introduced, such as network compression, caching, Quality of Service (QoS), and the Space Communication Protocol Standards Transport Protocol (SCPS-TP). The model is then altered to reflect an optimized system, and simulations are run for comparison. Data for the optimized model was obtained by testing commercial optimization products known as Protocol Enhancement Proxies ( Support Activity (MCTSSA) testing laboratory.

Forward operators are subjected to both physical and mental workload in their work and a way to reduce mental workload and increase productivity is to automating the crane movement. To enable study the impact of automation you need methods to estimate the forwarder operators mental workload in conventional crane work and with semi automation. This study evaluated the psychophysiological parameters; trapezius muscle activity, heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, skin conductance and finger temperature. To ensure the validity and methodology reliability one need to perform more extensive studies. As for future studies this work propose additional studies of forward operator mental workload in the simulator environment regarding heart rate, heart rate variability and respiration. / Skogsmaskinförarens arbete innebär en hög belastning såväl fysiskt som mentalt. Dels för att det innefattar moment av statiskt och repetitvt arbete och dels för att en stor mängd information bearbetas och många beslut fattas på kort tid. Mental belastning är ett begrepp för olika former av belastning som påverkar människans förmåga att bearbeta information. Det finns ingen enskild faktor som kan utgöra ett mått på mental belastning. Såväl prestation som subjektiva bedömningar och psykofysiologiska mätmetoder används för att mäta mental belastning. Exempel på psykofysiologiska mätmetoder är muskelaktivitet, hjärtfrekvens, hjärtfrekvensvariabilitet, andningsfrekvens, hudkonduktans och fingertemperatur. Ett sätt att försöka minska belastningen för skotarföraren är att automatisera vissa moment i kranens arbete. Syftet med examensarbetet var att utvärdera psykofysiologiska mätmetoder lämpliga för att beöma skillnaden i mental belastning hos skotarförare vid arbete med konventionellt- och delautomatiserat kranarbete i simulatormiljö. Resultatet visar på en potential hos analyserna hjärtfrekvens, hjärtfrekvensvariabilitet och andning för fortsatta studier. Muskelaktiviteten i form av trapezius-EMG och hudkonduktans var analyser behäftade med höga brusnivåer och artefakter i studien. Arbetet ger även en bild av komplexiteten i studier där teknik och människa interagerar. Den tekniska kapaciteten på skogsmaskiner är idag så avancerad att maskinföraren bedöms vara den begränsande faktorn för prestationen. För att öka produktiviteten i skogsbruket är det av stor vikt att den tekniska utvecklingen samspelar med interaktionen mellan människa och maskin för att främja ett hållbart skogsbruk för såväl maskinförare som för skog och miljö.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilka aspekter i socialsekreterarnas yrkesutövning iorganisationen som de upplever bidrar till hög arbetsbelastning, hur de beskriver att de hanterarden och eventuellt förbättrar sin egen arbetssituation och vilka arbetsfaktorer de upplever sommeningsfulla och som gör att de fortfarande arbetar kvar inom socialtjänsten. För att besvarastudiens syfte använde vi oss av en kvalitativ forskningsansats i form av semistruktureradeintervjuer. Dessa intervjuer har sedan tolkats för att hitta likheter och skillnader som sedananalyserats med hjälp av sociologiska teorier om organisationens roll, krav och kontroll ochkänsla av sammanhang. Studiens resultat visar att socialsekreterarna i perioder upplevde högarbetsbelastning. I resultatet redogörs det även för olika strategier som socialsekreterarnaanvände sig av för att kunna hantera detta. Resultatet visade också att socialsekreterarna upplevdeatt det finns en hel del belöningar och att de ändå ser sitt arbete som meningsfullt. Vår slutsatsblev att arbetsbelastningen inte behöver vara ett problem så länge som samarbetet mellan ledningoch anställda fungerade. / The purpose of this study is to investigate which aspects of social secretaries profession in theorganization that they feel contributes to high workloads, how they describe their handling of itand how they possibly improve their work situation and what work factors they perceive asmeaningful and that makes them still work in social services. To answer the purpose of the studywe used a qualitative approach in the form of semi-structured interviews. These interviews havesince been interpreted to find similarities and differences which then has been analyzed usingsociological theories about the organization's role, requirements and control and sense ofcoherence. The study results show that social workers in periods experienced heavy workload.The result also discusses the various strategies that the social workers made use of to be able tohandle this. The results also showed that social workers felt that there are a lot of rewards andthat they still see their work as meaningful. Our conclusion was that the workload does not needto be seen as a problem as long as the cooperation between management and employees worked.

I denna studie har vi undersökt hur socialarbetare som arbetar på HVB-hem med ensamkommande flyktingbarn upplever sin psykosociala arbetsmiljö. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer med sju informanter som arbetar på tre olika HVB-hem. De verksamheter som representeras i studien finns i tre olika kommuner i Sverige. Fem centrala faktorer identifierades som bidragande till en tillfredsställande psykosocial arbetsmiljö: arbetsklimatet i teamet, arbetstider, kompetens, säkerhet och ledarskap. Studiens slutsats är att arbetsklimatet i teamet har störst betydelse för trivseln på arbetsplatsen och att även handledning är betydelsefull som stödinsats och för att motverka stress. Handledning ger även utrymme för reflektion och bidrar till kunskap. Ett tydligt ledarskap med en stödjande funktion för socialarbetaren utgör en god förutsättning för socialarbetarens arbete. / In this study we investigated how social workers employed in a residential care home (HVB home) for unaccompanied child refugees experience their psychosocial work environment. The study was conducted by means of qualitative interviews with seven informants who worked at three different HVB homes. The homes represented in the study are located in three different municipalities in Sweden. Five key factors that contribute to a satisfactory psychosocial work environment were identified: the work environment in the teams, the work schedule, competence, safety and leadership. It was concluded that the work environment in the teams has a major influence on satisfaction with the workplace and that supervision is an important support intervention for preventing stress. Supervision also provides an opportunity for reflection and contributes to knowledge enhancement. Clear leadership with support in the form of supervision for social workers constitutes a good basis for their work.

This study examined emotional labor as a potential source of stress for nursing students, as nursing students' performance of emotional labor may impact their working lives in important ways. Participants were 107 undergraduate and graduate nursing students enrolled in a large southeastern university who completed the Discrete EmotionsEmotional Labor Scale (DEELS; Glomb & Tews, 20041, the Student Nurse Stress Index (SNSI; Jones & Johnston, 1999), the Job Descriptive Index (JDI; Balzer et al., 20001, and the Job in General (JIG; Balzer et al., 2000) scales. Two sub-samples of nursing students were identified, one of which held a registered nurse license (seasoned group; N = 54), and the other which had no previous clinical training in nursing (unseasoned group; N = 53). First, it was hypothesized that frequency of faking emotions and suppressingemotions would predict stress and satisfaction levels for the overall sample. A second hypothesis explored if seasoned nursing students engaged in higher frequencies of faking and suppression of emotion when performing clinical nursing work. Results indicated that frequency of faking emotion was negatively correlated with student nursing stress overall, and also nursing stress about interface worries. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that faking emotion and suppression emotion while engaged in clinical nursing work were significant predictors of overall nursing student stress. In addition, faking and suppressing emotion were significant predictors of stress related to the balance of personal and professional life. However, use of emotional labor strategies did not predictstress related to personal problems, or satisfaction with either work or the job in general. Furthermore, no differences were found with regard to frequencies of faking and suppressing emotion when seasoned and unseasoned students were compared. Other findings included that clinical nursing experience was positively related to genuine expression of emotion. In addition, students reported both high levels of stress with school and high levels of satisfaction. Students suppressed emotion while engaged in clinical work more frequently than they faked emotion. Overall, results of the present study suggested a link between nursing student performance of emotional labor strategies and their stress levels.

This diploma thesis deals with impact of stress on performance of military pilots of supersonic aircrafts. The theoretical part is based on definition of the term stress, his relating theories, the strategies of coping with stress and possible methods of objectivization of mental workload. This part also provides an overview of stress occuring during flight activity and specifics of the job of military pilot. The research is based on theoretical models and previous researches and the aim is to analyze the hypothesis about the dependence of stress on performance of the military pilot.This correlation was empirically verified by experimental study conducted in tactical flight simulator designed for a training on supersonic airplanes. The mental workload was investigated by physiological data and psychological questionnaires. The results are showing the most stressful and most difficult situations that appeared during tactical combat mission. There was a significant correlation between personality, resting heart rate and the effectivity of the performance. Key words: Stress, Military pilots, Performance, Mental workload, Heart rate

The purpose of this thesis was to analyze the problem of resource load balancing in virtualization clusters. Another aim was to implement a pilot version of resource load balancer for the VMware vSphere Standard-based virtualization cluster. The thesis also inspected available commercial and open source resource load balancers and examined their usability and effectiveness. While designing the custom solution, a modification of the greedy algorithm has been chosen to be used to determine which virtual machines should be migrated and to select their target hosts. Furthermore, experiments have been conducted to determine some parameters for the algorithm. Finally, it was experimentally verified that the implemented solution can be applied to effectively balance virtualization server workloads by live migrating virtual machines running on these hosts.

Title: Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders amongst Physical Therapists and Assistants in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Aim: 1) To determine the prevalence of work related musculoskeletal disorder among physical therapist and assistants in physical therapy departments in Jeddah city. 2) To determine what age and sex (male- female) has the highest rates of disorders 3) To determine the most problematic area in the body that physical therapist and assistants complain from. Methods: Modified Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire which was adapted in a study was made Kuwait in the year of 2010 it's a combination of self-writing and multiple choice questions. Paper based survey was distributed to 165 participants from different work settings in Jeddah City then analysed with SPSS analytics software. Result: The percentage of Work related musculoskeletal disorder among physical therapists in Jeddah city is 86.1%. The risk factors associated with work was scored as moderate by 70.3%. The low back region is most body parts complained about by 42.42%. Both sexes (Male-Female) where affected equally as age, BMI was not related significantly except in few body parts. Also, the absence of assistive machinery devices was only significant in two (Shoulder and Wrist) body region where the rest was not significant. Thus...

Syftet med studien var att undersöka arbetstillfredsställelse hos tjänstemän på en myndighet i Mellansverige. Självskattad arbetsbelastning och arbetskontroll utgjorde prediktorer och självskattad hälsa utfallsvariabeln med dimensionerna kognitiv utmattning, störd sömn, fysiska symptom, lättretlighet och negativa känslor. Studien genomfördes med en enkät i pappersformat, där 45 medarbetare deltog. Mätinstrumenten som användes var Job overload, Work control och Karolinska Exhaustion Scale (KES). Studiens huvudresultat visade att arbetsbelastning hade ett signifikant positivt samband med negativa känslor, i meningen att ju högre arbetsbelastning desto fler negativa känslor. Arbetskontroll visade endast på starka tendenser till signifikanta positiva samband med två av hälsodimensionerna; kognitiv utmattning och fysiska symptom. Vilket indikerade på att ju högre arbetskontroll deltagarna hade, desto högre kognitiv utmattning och flera fysiska symptom upplevde de sig ha. / The aim of the study was to investigate job satisfaction among officials in an Swedish authority. Our predictors consisted of work-related load and control and the outcome variable was perceived health. Health variable involved five dimensions: cognitive exhaustion, disturbed sleep, physical symptoms, irritability and negative affect. 45 employees participated by answering a survey. The results showed that workload had a significant positive relationship with negative affect, meaning the higher workload, the more negative emotions. Work control on the other hand, did only show strong tendencies to significant positive associations with cognitive exhaustion and physical symptoms. This indicated the higher work control, the higher cognitive exhaustion and number of physical symptoms.