Workplace Environment Assessment Essay
The Assessment Tool is a way for organizations, departments and units to measure progress on achieving these essential standards.Workplace Environment Assessment Essay Paper
This is a screening tool, not a diagnostic test. It evaluates a work environment based on each of the standards but does not diagnose specific challenges within a standard. We recommend using the tool to identify problems and evaluate progress, not to diagnose specific causes. Workplace Environment Assessment Essay Paper
For example, most standards require support and collaboration among administrators, nurse managers, physicians, nurses and other staff. Creating a healthy work environment is more than a thing to do. It is a way of being that relies on the strength of the entire team. The culture becomes compromised when any part of the team fails to support a standard.
This tool evaluates your environment based on the standards and not individual groups within a team. It isn’t designed to place blame or to isolate specific factors. The score report recommends steps and resources to help you diagnose the root cause of problems and start the journey to resolve them.
Test Development and Psycho metrics
The psychometric characteristics of this tool are evolving. Each standard is assessed on a scale composed of three unique questions. The questions and scales have been reviewed for face validity and administered to two groups of 250 subjects each. Both samples were tested for reliability and showed internal consistency with identical factor structures and Bernbach’s Alpha scores of 0.80 or better. Workplace Environment Assessment Essay Paper
FAQs
- Who is the assessment administrator?
- This is the person who registers a group for the assessment. It can be anyone, but most often it will be a facility’s manager or clinical leader.
- How long does the assessment take to administer?
- Depending on how many people will be invited to take the assessment, an assessment administrator can register and send email invitations in less than 15 minutes.
- How long does it take to complete the assessment?
- The 18-question assessment should take no more than 10 minutes to complete.
- Are the responses anonymous?
- Yes, all responses are anonymous and confidential. The report will not contain individual participants’ answers, but will compile the results anonymously. Surveys can only be created for five or more participants per work unit to protect anonymity.
- Who receives the assessment report?
- The assessment administrator receives an anonymous summary report for his/her group. This report does not contain the answers of the individual participants.
- What information does the assessment report provide?
- View a sample assessment report
- Will information collected in the assessment be shared with outside groups?
- AACN may analyze aggregate data. If reports are published, we will not disclose the names of participating organizations, assessment administrators or assessment subjects.
An environmental assessment is an opportunity to tour and observe the workplace to understand more about the setting employees work in and the physical factors at and nearby the worksite that support or hinder employee health and evaluate the physical and organizational work environment for health hazards and risks. The built environment includes all the physical parts of the worksite (e.g., building, open spaces, streets, and infrastructure) which can influence employee health. It considers such components as land use patterns, transportation systems, and design features.Workplace Environment Assessment Essay Paper
- Land use patterns refer to the spatial distribution of human activities
- Transportation systems refer to the physical infrastructure and services that provide the spatial links or connectivity among activities
- Design refers to the aesthetic, physical, and functional qualities of the built work environment, such as the design of buildings and streets capes, and relates to both land use patterns and the transportation system4
An assessment of the physical work environment can identify a number of opportunities for employers to create access and opportunity for employees to practice healthy behaviors, such as physical activity, or discourage unhealthy behaviors, such as creating a tobacco free work environment. When conducting an environmental assessment of the workplace, it is important to recognize that there are numerous physical features that may be examined. The organization can decide how narrow or broad to make the assessment.
To properly identify health risks and hazards from the work environment that may cause occupational disease or injury and institute prevention and control measures for these risks, employers can implement a system to collect, analyze, and interpret occupational disease and injury control information. This system involves collecting data from many sources including workplace inspections, measurement and evaluation of exposure, examination of workers, record keeping, and reporting of health effects and exposures for acute (when the time between exposure and disease or injury is short) or chronic conditions (e.g., resulting from repeated exposure).Workplace Environment Assessment Essay Paper
Direct observation of the work environment through a workplace inspection is an important source of data. Inspections can be conducted 1) on a regular and routine basis to identify hazards; 2) following an incident or accident resulting in injury to identify cause(s) and; 3) when someone at the workplace requests an inspection due to a suspicion of a health or safety hazard. Inspections can be performed by a variety of individuals including workers; health and safety professionals; engineers; external agencies, such as regulatory agencies; insurance providers; corporate officials; or union representatives. Because of their familiarity with the worksite and work environment, workers are good sources of environmental health and safety risk information and may provide information not found in formal records (e.g., OSHA) or workers compensation claims. However, the information workers provide should not substitute for a professional evaluation of the workplace practices and the work environment by an industrial hygienist or ergonomics.5
The following questions may be helpful to consider when planning a worksite environmental assessment:
- Is the workplace free of recognized health and safety hazards?
- Are there health and safety risks that may be anticipated and addressed based on knowledge or experience with similar worksites in the organization?
- What are the mechanisms for reporting and responding to perceived health and safety threats? How effective are these mechanisms?
- What are the mechanisms and channels for communicating about workplace health and safety? How effective are they?
Just like any work environment, the typical healthcare workplace can be healthy, unhealthy, or somewhere in between. Perhaps because of the extremely important nature of the work being done there, and because so much hangs in the balance, the healthcare workplace can be more susceptible to systemic problems that hinder efficacy and success. For nurses especially, a healthy work environment is critical to ensuring that they can do their best work and achieve optimal outcomes for their patients and their patients families, says the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN).Workplace Environment Assessment Essay Paper