PERCEIVED SAFETY CLIMATES: A PAPER INVESTIGATING THE MEDIATING EFFECTS OF SAFETY COMMUNICATION AND LEARNING IN TEAMS ON JOB SATISFACTION AND REPORTED ADVERSE EVENTS

Abstract

Job satisfaction is an important element in health care organizations, especially since nursing shortage has in recent years become an issue in health care organizations. Another key element in health care organizations is the frequency of adverse events occurrence, given that safety is of paramount importance. To address these issues, this paper uses secondary data on nurses to explain the associations between perceived safety climates (error prevention, error management, violation prevention and violation management) with job satisfaction and reported adverse events, through the mediating mechanisms of safety communication and learning in teams. As hypothesized, safety communication and learning in teams mediates the positive relationship between the perceived climates and job satisfaction (with the exception of violation management). In addition, as hypothesized, safety communication mediates the negative relationship between perceived climates and reported adverse events (with the exception of violation management). However, the hypotheses for learning in teams mediating the negative relationship between the perceived climates and reported adverse events was not supported.