Effects of Air Pollution on Public and Private Health Expenditures in Iran: A Time Series Study (1972-2014) / 예방의학회지

OBJECTIVES: Environmental pollution is a negative consequence of the development process, and many countries are grappling with this phenomenon. As a developing country, Iran is not exempt from this rule, and Iran pays huge expenditures for the consequences of pollution. The aim of this study was to analyze the long- and short-run impact of air pollution, along with other health indicators, on private and public health expenditures. METHODS: This study was an applied and developmental study. Autoregressive distributed lag estimating models were used for the period of 1972 to 2014. In order to determine the co-integration between health expenditures and the infant mortality rate, fertility rate, per capita income, and pollution, we used the Wald test in Microfit version 4.1. We then used Eviews version 8 to evaluate the stationarity of the variables and to estimate the long- and short-run relationships. RESULTS: Long-run air pollution had a positive and significant effect on health expenditures, so that a 1.00% increase in the index of carbon dioxide led to an increase of 3.32% and 1.16% in public and private health expenditures, respectively. Air pollution also had a greater impact on health expenditures in the long term than in the short term. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study indicate that among the factors affecting health expenditures, environmental quality and contaminants played the most important role. Therefore, in order to reduce the financial burden of health expenditures in Iran, it is essential to reduce air pollution by enacting and implementing laws that protect the environment.

Occupational accidents among hospital staff

Background: The importance of safety in hospitals can be studied from different angles since hospital is a critical environment for incidents. Assessment of occupational accidents in hospitals can prevent their recurrence and maintain human and financial resources. This study aimed to investigate the occupational accidents among staff in a hospital

Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was carried out in a hospital in Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Two hundred and thirty staff from various wards of the hospital were recruited by stratified random sampling. Data collection was performed using a researcher-made questionnaire. Data were analyzed by the SPSS-20 software with descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests

Results: The study results revealed that among staff, most of the occupational accidents was related to skin contact with blood or other body fluids and least of them belonged to toxicity with solvents. The results showed significant differences regarding occupational accidents between different groups of gender, years of work experience, organizational position, shift type, and age

Conclusion: Since most of the occupational accidents happened at least one time among hospital staff, paying attention to prevention of it is necessary. Due to the complex nature of hospitals, management and prevention of occupational accidents require all personnel's willpower and involvement, and hospital management reform

Relationship between nurses' organizational commitment and services quality

Background: Organizational commitment and its significant impact on the job satisfaction and performance has been the subject of many studies. Regarding the importance of organizational behavior and its role in service quality, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between nurses' organizational commitment and hospital services in order to improve its quality

Methods: This study was a cross sectional survey and a total of 149 nurses and 237 patients from inpatient wards of hospitals affiliated to Tehran Social Security Organization were selected through cluster sampling. To collect data, two standard questionnaires [organizational commitment and quality of service] were used. Statistical analysis was performed using Spearman and Pearson correlation test

Results: Our findings indicated that the nurses' organizational commitment was moderate [x=3.02 out of 5] and service quality was higher than average, Continuance [r=0.3, P=0.04], affective [r=0.33, P=0.03], normative commitment [r=0.34, P=0.05], and overall commitment [r=0.35, P=0.04] were significantly related to total service quality

Conclusion: The enhancement of normative commitment through emphasis upon organizational values and recruitment, as well as enhancement of continuance commitment through career promotion methods and equal assessment will improve the service quality in hospitals

[Relationship between organizational culture and intellectual capital among managers of Imam Khomeini relief foundation [IKRF] deputy for support and health; 2010]

Investigating the effect of intellectual capital on an organization's ongoing processes is a way of determining its weaknesses as well as appropriate strategies which help managers to make decisions. The main purpose of this study was to confirm intellectual capitals through improving organizational culture among staff managers of IKRF-deputy for support and health. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study that was conducted in 1389. The respondents were selected among staff managers of IKRF-deputy for support and health [N=50]. Data collection was a questionnaire which consisted of three parts developed by the researcher. Data analysis was performed with SPSS version 16 with the help of descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation test. Most of the top and middle managers enjoyed an average organizational culture [top managers=58/3%; middle managers=78/3%]. The intellectual capital of most managers of this study was below average [mean=2.23]. Finally, with respect to the entire managers-both top and middle-, there was a significant relation between organizational culture and intellectual capital [P<0/001]. Taking into account the significant relation between OC and IC and also the point that organizations try to apply appropriate human resources it becomes further important to improve managing intellectual capitals. In this respect, organizational culture is the most basic substructure

Rate of implementation of standard codes for injuries, burns and poisoning in teaching-hospitals of the Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Medical Universities

Standard codes and their descriptions are important tools for research, design implementation and evaluation of the injury control program and its sub-categories. In this research the medical records of 735 patients diagnosed with injuries, burns or poisonings from teaching-hospitals of the Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti medical universities [N=22] were selected to be reviewed. The records were selected by systematic sampling and pertained to the first 6 months of 2006. From 33 available hospitals 22 met the criteria to be included in this research. The data were collected via a checklist and direct observation. The validity of the checklist was confirmed by experts. The mean percents for implementing standard codes for injuries were 77.80, 67.64, and 70.11% in teaching-hospitals of the Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti medical universities. For external causes these statistics were 57.80, 70.03, and 62.17% respectively. For burns, the mean percent of implementing standard codes was 55.77 and 58.33% teaching hospitals of the Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti medical universities and for external causes these statistics were 54.17 and 53.33% respectively. The teaching-hospitals of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences did not admit patients with burns and patients with poisonings were only admitted in Loghman hospital from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. The mean percent of using standard codes for poisoning was 68.23% in this hospital and for external causes 61.27%. The rate of implementation of standard codes varies among the universities and this condition indicates the need of an intervention program

[Performance evaluation of the total quality management model [ISO 9001: 2000] in social security organizations' hospitals in Tehran province, Iran]

Today the issue of quality improvement in health care organizations has become more important than before, but the effectiveness of various quality management models remains questionable. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the performance of the Total Quality Management model [ISO 9001: 2000] implemented in Social Security Organizations' hospitals in T.ehran province. This was a descriptive and cross-sectional study implementing applied manner. Data were collected in brain storming committee of quality managers and experts and were analyzed with inferential statistics. After implementation of ISO 9001: 2000 standards in the investigated hospitals, the rate of improvement on human resource affairs, customer satisfaction, important administrative activities, and relationship with suppliers, finance, and marketing processes were as follows: 61.24%, 60.41%, 57.91%, 50.31%, and 45.8% respectively. The average rate of improvement for all of the hospitals together over the five stated dimensions was 55.13%. Implementation of ISO 9001: 2000 standards promoted a lot of the organizational processes in the investigated hospitals. However, the rate of success is far from the ideal level and it is highly recommended that the investigated hospitals put more time and attention on continues improvement of the processes in their organizations specially on the financing and marketing procedures and relationship with suppliers companies