A study of the relationship between occupational stress and work accidents in employees of fire department and safety services of Yazd city

Reza  Jafari Nodoushan; Gholamhossein   Halvani; Ali  Sadri; Alireza   Mirjalili; Mahsa   NAzari; Hadi Alimoradi; Vida sadat   Anoosheh

doi:10.18502/tbj.v18i3.1445

Reza Jafari Nodoushan
Gholamhossein Halvani
Ali Sadri
Alireza Mirjalili
Mahsa NAzari
Hadi Alimoradi
Vida sadat Anoosheh

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18502/tbj.v18i3.1445

Keywords: Occupational stress, Occupational accidents, Fire department and safety services.

Abstract

Introduction: Job stress is one of the most important phenomena in social life and is a serious threat to the workforce health worldwide. Job stress can cause occupational accidents, result in injuries to people, and damage equipment of the workplace. Firefighting is also one of the most stressful occupations. Firefighters have one of the most important intensive occupations and need to be physically and mentally fit to perform their missions and tasks safely. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between occupational stress and work accidents among the staff of fire department and safety services of Yazd province.

Methods: This descriptive-survey study was conducted on all personnel of the Firefighting Organization (300 employees) in 2018. The sample group consisted of 160 employees randomly selected from the whole population. The available sampling method and the research tools included two questionnaires of individual-occupational information and Bellik's occupational stress questionnaire (1991). The reliability co-efficient of job stress questionnaire was 0.78 and the validity of both questionnaires was confirmed by several experts. The statistical methods used in this research were descriptive and inferential statistics (t tests, Pearson correlation coefficient, and single-variable regression analysis).

Results: The results showed that occupational stress in employees was higher than the average. Moreover, job stress had a significant correlation with physical condition of the work environment, accidents, occupational injuries, time pressure at work, work environment problems, and decision making.

Conclusion: Employees exposed to stress are involved with physical weaknesses and suffering from low spirits. Stress also causes unwillingness and coldness to perform the tasks, reduces the staff's energy, decreases the employees' adaptation to the environment, decreases efficiency, causes confusion in decision making, leads to disturbances in organizational relationships, and reduces job values and organizational productivity of employees working in fire department and safety services of Yazd province.