First validation of the technical and administrative staff quality of life at work tool (TASQ@work) in academia.

Introduction: Based on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, the present study aimed to validate "The Technical and Administrative Staff Quality of Life At Work" (TASQ@work), a new tool to assess the quality of life at work in academia focused on technical and administrative staff. Methods: This tool was developed by the QoL@Work research team, a group of expert academics in the field of work and organizational psychology affiliated with the Italian Association of Psychologists. The TASQ@work was elaborated in different steps. The first phase was aimed at the identification of the dimensions of the tool. The second phase was aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the tool. The validation process involved confirmatory analysis and measurement invariance of the various constructs selected. The analyses were performed in a convenience sample of two Italian universities in different regions (one in the Northwest and the second in Central Italy). Results: The sample was composed of 1820 Administrative Staff, comprising 69.4% from University 1 (N = 1,263) and 30.6% from University 2 (N = 557). The TASQ@work presented satisfactory psychometric properties (normality of the items, reliability and content, construct and nomological validity) and measurement invariance across gender, seniority, and Athenaeum. Discussion: The results indicate that the tool can be considered a reliable and valid instrument to assess job demands, job resources, and outcomes in the working life of technical and administrative academic staff. In this perspective, the present study represents the first contribution to the debate on the psychosocial risks in academic contexts by presenting a new tool, the TASQ@work, aimed at contextualizing the JD-R model to understand the role played by psychosocial aspects in affecting the well-being of the academic employees.

A New Academic Quality at Work Tool (AQ@workT) to Assess the Quality of Life at Work in the Italian Academic Context.

The present study provides evidence for a valid and reliable tool, the Academic Quality at Work Tool (AQ@workT), to investigate the quality of life at work in academics within the Italian university sector. The AQ@workT was developed by the QoL@Work research team, namely a group of expert academics in the field of work and organizational psychology affiliated with the Italian Association of Psychologists. The tool is grounded in the job demands-resources model and its psychometric properties were assessed in three studies comprising a wide sample of lecturers, researchers, and professors: a pilot study (N = 120), a calibration study (N = 1084), and a validation study (N = 1481). Reliability and content, construct, and nomological validity were supported, as well as measurement invariance across work role (researchers, associate professors, and full professors) and gender. Evidence from the present study shows that the AQ@workT represents a useful and reliable tool to assist university management to enhance quality of life, to manage work-related stress, and to mitigate the potential for harm to academics, particularly during a pandemic. Future studies, such as longitudinal tests of the AQ@workT, should test predictive validity among the variables in the tool.

The role of colleague incivility in linking work-related stressors and job burnout. A cross-sectional study in a sample of faculty administrative employees.

BACKGROUND: Colleague incivility is one of the subtlest forms of workplace aggression, referring to any low-intensity deviant behavior in violation of the norms of mutual respect with ambiguous intent to harm the target. Although a large corpus of literature has identified the negative consequences of colleague incivility for workers and their organizations, there is a paucity of studies aimed at examining the role played by job characteristics in triggering this form of aggression. The present study, referring to the work environment assumption of Einarsen (2000), proposes that workplace aggression is primarily affected by factors related to deficiencies in the psychosocial work environment. In this view, the present study aimed to test whether the relationships between stressors in the psychosocial work environment (i.e., workload, role conflict, and unfair reward) and burnout (i.e., exhaustion and cynicism) are mediated by colleague incivility. METHODS: The study design was cross-sectional and non-randomized. In total, 659 administrative officers employed in a large-sized Italian university completed a self-report questionnaire. Regression and mediation analyses (using the SPSS PROCESS macro) were performed to test the study hypotheses. -Findings: After adjusting for control variables (i.e., superior incivility, age, gender, interactions with teaching staff, and interactions with students), the analyses indicated that colleague incivility mediated the associations of role conflict and unfair reward with the two dimensions of burnout. In contrast, the mediating role of colleague incivility in the associations of workload with exhaustion and cynicism was not supported. DISCUSSION: The present study shed light on the key role of colleague incivility in the linkage of variables describing job characteristics and job burnout. From a practical point of view, the present study suggests that in order to prevent colleague incivility, interventions such as job (re)design should be implemented.

'First, Do No Harm': The Role of Negative Emotions and Moral Disengagement in Understanding the Relationship Between Workplace Aggression and Misbehavior.

Workplace aggression is a critical phenomenon particularly in the healthcare sector, where nurses are especially at risk of bullying and third-party aggression. While workplace aggression has been frequently examined in relation to health problems, less is known about the possible negative impact such aggression may have on the (un)ethical behavior of victims. Our research aims to fill this gap. Drawing on literature on counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and the social-cognitive literature on aggression we investigated in two independent studies (NStudy1 = 439; NStudy2 = 416), the role of negative emotions - in particular anger, fear, and sadness, - and of moral disengagement (MD) in the paths between workplace aggression, CWB and health symptoms. The focus on these relationships is rooted in two reasons. First, misbehavior at work is a pervasive phenomenon worldwide and second, little research has been conducted in the healthcare sector on this type of behavior despite the potential importance of the issue in this context. We empirically tested our hypotheses considering a specific form of workplace aggression in each study: workplace bullying or third-party aggression. Results from the two empirical studies confirm the hypotheses that being target of workplace aggression (bullying or third-party aggression) is not only associated with health symptoms but also with misbehavior. In addition, the results of structural equation modeling attest the importance of examining specific discrete negative emotions and MD for better understanding misbehavior at work. In particular, this research shows for the first time that anger, fear, and sadness, generally aggregated into a single dimension, are indeed differently associated with MD, misbehavior and health symptoms. Specifically, in line with the literature on discrete emotions, while sadness is only associated with health symptoms, anger and fear are related to both health and misbehavior.

Fertilizing a Patient Engagement Ecosystem to Innovate Healthcare: Toward the First Italian Consensus Conference on Patient Engagement.

Currently we observe a gap between theory and practices of patient engagement. If both scholars and health practitioners do agree on the urgency to realize patient engagement, no shared guidelines exist so far to orient clinical practice. Despite a supportive policy context, progress to achieve greater patient engagement is patchy and slow and often concentrated at the level of policy regulation without dialoguing with practitioners from the clinical field as well as patients and families. Though individual clinicians, care teams and health organizations may be interested and deeply committed to engage patients and family members in the medical course, they may lack clarity about how to achieve this goal. This contributes to a wide "system" inertia-really difficult to be overcome-and put at risk any form of innovation in this filed. As a result, patient engagement risk today to be a buzz words, rather than a real guidance for practice. To make the field clearer, we promoted an Italian Consensus Conference on Patient Engagement (ICCPE) in order to set the ground for drafting recommendations for the provision of effective patient engagement interventions. The ICCPE will conclude in June 2017. This document reports on the preliminary phases of this process. In the paper, we advise the importance of "fertilizing a patient engagement ecosystem": an oversimplifying approach to patient engagement promotion appears the result of a common illusion. Patient "disengagement" is a symptom that needs a more holistic and complex approach to solve its underlined causes. Preliminary principles to promote a patient engagement ecosystem are provided in the paper.

The healthcare operators' experience with aggressive patients and their visitors: a cross-sectional study in four clinical departments.

BACKGROUND: Aggressive behaviour of patients and their relatives represent a risk factor for healthcare professionals. OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to explore the context of high risk departments (emergency department, psychiatric department) and of low risk departments (midwifery/paediatrics and outpatients clinic): a) the risk of exposure to various forms of aggression (physical, verbal, threats) by patients and their visitors towards healthcare professionals; b) how the healthcare professionals react to such aggressive events; c) the relationship between verbal aggression and healthcare professional burnout, compared to other work-related stressors. METHODS: The cross-sectional study involved 620 healthcare workers in a hospital in northern Italy (47.7% redemption rate, equivalent to 296 subjects). The data were gathered through a self-report on-line questionnaire. RESULTS: The risk of aggression, regardless of its form, was not dependent on the role of the healthcare professional, while risk was lower for older professionals and for women. The risk index for emergency department health professionals was higher than the index for professionals in the other three areas. Perceived levels of verbal aggression in the midwifery/paediatrics department were similar to those in the psychiatric department. Verbal aggression was found to be linked to the three dimensions of burnout and to a higher contribution to depersonalisation. CONCLUSIONS: the study showed that specific prevention initiatives and health profession support are also needed in clinical departments traditionally considered at low risk.

Verbal Aggression from Care Recipients as a Risk Factor among Nursing Staff: A Study on Burnout in the JD-R Model Perspective.

Among nursing staff, the risk of experiencing violence, especially verbal aggression, is particularly relevant. The present study, developed in the theoretical framework of the Job Demands-Resources model (JD-R), has two main aims: (a) to examine the association between verbal aggression and job burnout in both nurses and nurse's aides and (b) to assess whether job content, social resources, and organizational resources lessen the negative impact of verbal aggression on burnout in the two professional groups. The cross-sectional study uses a dataset that consists of 630 workers (522 nurses and 108 nurse's aides) employed in emergency and medical units. High associations were found between verbal aggression and job burnout in both professional groups. Moderated hierarchical regressions showed that, among nurses, only the job content level resources moderated the effects of the verbal aggression on job burnout. Among nurse's aides, the opposite was found. Some resources on the social and organizational levels but none of the job content level resources buffered the effects of verbal aggression on workers burnout. The study highlights the crucial role of different types of resources in protecting nursing staff from the detrimental effects of verbal aggression on job burnout.

Interprofessional team dynamics and information flow management in emergency departments.

AIM: In Emergency Departments, fragmentation and breakdown in information exchange can be important factors leading to adverse events. This article aims to consider the critical aspects of collaborative teamwork in Emergency Departments that may have an impact on the information flow. BACKGROUND: On the basis of Distributed Cognition Theory, we have assumed that cognitive outcomes in critical-care settings are not confined to the thoughts of isolated individuals; rather, they are better understood as properties of a distributed cognitive system across the minds of the clinical team members and across the technological artefacts. DESIGN: We report on an exploratory ethnographic study of two Emergency Departments. METHODS: Data were collected over a period of four months in 2008 via observation and interviews. RESULTS: The results highlight a specific distribution of cognitive work between physicians and nurses. The nurse's roles as information highlighter, memory keeper and process organizer helped to ensure the information flow and to overcome some of the problems identified with the computer-assisted communication process. Such distribution of cognitive work improved care quality, but it crossed established professional boundaries. CONCLUSION: As cross-boundary distribution of cognitive work in Emergency Departments can be perceived as role substitution, building an interprofessional working system is needed to avoid information breakdown in fast-moving contexts. To realize an interprofessional working system, practice-based training is required, aimed at developing a deep understanding of team cognition.

Criopreservação de embriões bovinos produzidos in vitro

Avaliou-se o processo de congelamento lento utilizando etilenoglicol 1,8 M, quanto à taxa de eclosão de blastocistos, rompimentode zona pelúcida e extrusão celular. Blastocistos de sete dias classificados como de graus I e II foram distribuídos emdois tratamentos: T1(embriões a fresco ) e T2 (congelamento lento com etilenoglicol 1,8 M). Realizou-se o congelamento emaparelho automático com curva de -6 a -35C e queda de 0,5C/min. Os embriões congelados foram estocados em nitrogêniolíquido. Imediatamente após o descongelamento os blastocistos foram cultivados individualmente em gotas de 100 ml domeio Glasgow BHK 21, onde permaneceram por 72 horas. Os embriões do T1 também foram submetidos a essas condições.A taxa de eclosão foi maior no T1 (P 0,01), assim como as de rompimento de zona pelúcida e extrusão celular foram maioresno T2 (P 0,01). Concluiu-se que a criopreservação de embriões bovinos produzidos in vitro, em etilenoglicol 1,8M, resultou emtaxas de eclosão satisfatórias, mesmo provocando danos como lesão de zona pelúcida e extrusão celular.

Circunferência escrotal e características do sêmen de touros Nelore aos 18 meses de idade

Circunferência escrota! (CE) e qualidade do sêmen (motilidade e patologia) de 100 touros Nelore aos 18 meses de idadeforam estudados objetivando obter subsídios que auxiliem a seleção de touros jovens Nelore para a reprodução. A média decircunferência escrota! foi de 24,8 ± 2,7cm, sendo que 54% apresentaram CE abaixo de 27cm. Trinta e quatro por cento dostouros apresentaram sêmen oligospérmico ou azoospérmico. A grande maioria (94,8%) dos animais com CE 23 em foioligo/azoospérmico. Diferença significativa (p 0,05) foi encontrada entre as médias de CE de touros com sêmen denso eoligospérmico e (p 0,05) entre as médias de CE de oligospérmicos e azoospérmicos. O percentual médio da motilidadeprogressiva e patologia do sêmen de touros Nelore aos 18 meses de idade foi de 51,4 ± 7,2% e 65,6 ± 5,4% respectivamente.Houve diferença significativa entre as médias de motilidade progressiva (p 0,05} e de patologia espermática (p 0,05) dosanimais com CE ~23 27cm e ~27cm. A correlação entre CE e motilidade progressiva do sêmen e entre CE e patologiaespermática foi de r = 0,34 e r = - 0,46 respectivamente. Conclui-se que a maioria dos touros Nelore aos 18 meses de idadesão púberes porém a qualidade seminal ainda é baixa. A CE pode ser considerada eficaz na seleção de touros jovens porapresentar nesta ocasião correlação com parâmetros estudados de qualidade seminal.