The Impact of Quality of Work Organization on Distress and Absenteeism among Healthcare Workers

Nicola Magnavita (), Carlo Chiorri, Leila Karimi and Maria Karanika-Murray
Additional contact information
Nicola Magnavita: Postgraduate School of Occupational Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 00168 Rome, Italy
Carlo Chiorri: Department of Educational Sciences, University of Genova, 16126 Genova, Italy
Leila Karimi: School of Applied Health, Psychology Department, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
Maria Karanika-Murray: Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, 50 Shakespeare Street, Nottingham NG1 4FQ, UK

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 20, 1-16

Abstract: The quality of work organization may be responsible not only for reduced productivity but also for an increased risk of mental and physical disorders. This study was aimed at testing this hypothesis. Workers of a local health unit in Italy were asked to fill out the Work Organization Assessment Questionnaire (WOAQ) during their periodic medical examinations in the second half of 2018. On the same occasion, they also completed the Demand/Control/Support (DCS) measure of job strain, the Effort/Reward Imbalance (ERI) questionnaire, and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ12) to assess psychological health. A total of 345 workers (85.8%) completed the survey. Linear regression analysis showed that the quality of work organization was inversely proportional to psychological health problems ( p < 0.001). Occupational stress, measured both by job strain and ERI, was a moderating factor in this relationship. The relationship between the WOAQ and psychological health, moderated by job strain or ERI, remained highly significant even after adjustment for sex, age, social support, and overcommitment. Regression models explained over 40% of the shared variance of the association between quality of work organization and psychological health. The quality of work organization significantly predicted the risk of sickness absence for musculoskeletal disorders (OR = 0.984, CI95% 0.972–0.996) and for other health problems (OR = 0.977, CI95% 0.967–0.988). A continuous improvement of work organization must consider not only the clients’ or production needs but also the well-being of workers.

Keywords: occupational stress; effort/reward imbalance; demand; control; social support; job strain; overcommitment; musculoskeletal disorders; mental health; sickness absence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13458/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13458/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:20:p:13458-:d:945642

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().