Miller, Rachel G
(2005)
AN ANALYTIC APPROACH TO IDENTIFYING VARIATIONS IN PERCEPTIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE BETWEEN THE ICUs OF A SINGLE INSTITUTION.
Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Organizational culture has been shown to be associated with intensive care unit job performance and patient outcomes. These findings have led to recommendations to improve the safety climate in ICUs. While ICUs within a single hospital may be expected to have similar climates, previous research has pointed to variations between ICUs. Also, ICU directors' assessments of their personnel's experiences may not be accurate. The purpose of this thesis was to determine whether variations in organizational culture exist between the ICUs of a single institution and between different types of personnel, as well as to assess the accuracy of ICU directors'perceptions of personnel attitudes.The personnel of four ICUs within a single hospital were surveyed using the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire - ICU, which was designed to assess organizational culture across six factors: teamwork climate, perceptions of management, safety climate, stress recognition, job satisfaction, and work environment. Mean and percent positive scores (percentage of scores greater than or equal to 75 on a 0-100 point scale) were calculated for each ICU and for each job type across ICUs. Generalized estimating equations were used to model each factor score by job type while accounting for a possible clustering effect due to ICU membership. Directors were asked to estimate their personnel's mean factor scores and differences between director estimates and actual scores were assessed using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Scores were found to differ significantly across ICUs for all factors except stress recognition. Scores for job satisfaction, perceptions of management, and working conditions were found to differ significantly between physicians and nurses. ICU directors tended to overestimate the attitudes of their personnel, however the overestimation was not found to be significant. The results suggest that assessments based on hospital level analysis or director opinion may not be sufficient. It is seemingly important to account for differences between ICUs, as well as between personnel types, when creating policies affecting organizational culture. The public health relevance of this thesis is in determining a unit of analysis for organizational culture assessments to improve job performance of ICU personnel, and subsequently, to hopefully improve patient outcomes.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
| Title | Member | Email Address | Pitt Username | ORCID |
|---|
| Committee Chair | Weissfeld, Lisa | lweis@pitt.edu | LWEIS | | | Committee Member | Angus, Derek | | | | | Committee Member | Kong, Lan | lkong@pitt.edu | LKONG | |
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| Date: |
14 June 2005 |
| Date Type: |
Completion |
| Defense Date: |
7 April 2005 |
| Approval Date: |
14 June 2005 |
| Submission Date: |
13 April 2005 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
School of Public Health > Biostatistics |
| Degree: |
MS - Master of Science |
| Thesis Type: |
Master's Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
GEE; patient safety; personnel attitudes |
| Other ID: |
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04132005-190309/, etd-04132005-190309 |
| Date Deposited: |
10 Nov 2011 19:36 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 13:39 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/7093 |
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