More than sleep problems? Testing five key health behaviors as reasons for quality of life issues among shift workers.

BACKGROUND: The shift work schedule is a common work arrangement that can disrupt typical sleep-wake rhythms and lead to negative health consequences. The present study aims to examine the effect of shift work on health-related quality of life (QoL) and explore potential behaviorial mediators (i.e., sleep, eating, exercise, smoking, drinking). METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 4,449 petroleum workers in southwest China. Data on shift work status, health behaviors, and physical and mental health QoL were collected. We tested our model using path analysis and the Monte Carlo approach among 2,129 included participants. RESULTS: After adjusting for covariates, shift work did not exhibit a significant direct association with QoL. However, shift work indirectly related to poorer physical health quality of life via less frequent healthy food consumption; shift work also indirectly related to poorer mental health QoL via both less frequent healthy food consumption and physical exercise. No significant indirect effects were found via sleeping, smoking, or drinking. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that shift work presents a challenge for QoL among Chinese petroleum workers due to their lesser engagement in two specific health behaviors: healthy eating and physical exercise. Healthy eating and exercise may present an even more prominent threat to shift workers' QoL than sleep and substance use. Strategies targeting shift work schedule as well as eating and exercise behaviors may help protect against poor QoL and adverse physical and mental health outcomes in this vulnerable group.

Exploring Barriers and Facilitators to Reducing the Environmental Impact of the Operating Room.

INTRODUCTION: The operating room (OR) is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions both nationally and globally. Successful implementation of quality improvement initiatives requires understanding of key stakeholders' perspectives of the issues at hand. Our aim was to explore surgical, anesthesia, and OR staff member perspectives on barriers and facilitators to reducing OR waste. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Identified stakeholders from a single academic medical center were interviewed to identify important barriers and facilitators to reducing surgical waste. Two team members with qualitative research experience used deductive logic guided by the Theoretical Domains Framework of behavior change to identify themes within transcripts. RESULTS: Nineteen participants including surgeons (n = 3, 15.8%), surgical residents (n = 5, 26.3%), an anesthesiologist (n = 1, 5.3%), anesthesia residents (n = 2, 10.5%), nurse anesthetists (n = 2, 10.5%), nurses (n = 5, 26.3%), and a surgical technologist (n = 1, 5.3%) were interviewed. Twelve of the 14 themes within the Theoretical Domains Framework were discovered in transcripts. Barriers within these themes included lack of resources to pursue environmental sustainability in the OR and the necessity of maintaining sterility for patient safety. Facilitators included emphasizing surgeon leadership within the OR to reduce unused supplies and spreading awareness of the environmental and economic impact of surgical waste. CONCLUSIONS: Interviewed stakeholders were able to identify areas where improvements around surgical waste reduction and management could be made at the institution by describing barriers and facilitators to sustainability-driven interventions. Future surgical waste reduction initiatives at this institution will be guided by these important perspectives.

Pet your cat, walk your dog: The spillover effects of morning quality time with pets on outcomes during and after the workday.

For decades, psychologists have explored dynamics within the realm of human-animal interaction. Organizational psychologists are no different; research has found that exchanges with pets and other animals have the potential to influence important work outcomes, such as performance, well-being, and satisfaction. Relatively little is understood, however, regarding the potential spillover effects of human-animal interaction from the non-work to work context. To address this gap in the literature, the present research-synthesising Broaden and Build Theory and Conservation of Resources Theory-explores the daily spillover effects of morning quality time with pets on affective, behavioural, and cognitive outcomes for employees, both during and after the workday. It is also suggested that openness to experience may act as a cross-level moderator for these daily relationships. An occupationally heterogenous daily diary sample of employed pet owners from the United Kingdom (NLevel 1 = 405, NLevel 2 = 81) was used to test these relationships. Using a mixed effects modelling approach, it was revealed that morning quality time with pets was associated with reduced Negative Affect (NA) during the workday, and reduced incivility and withdrawal upon returning home from work. Moreover, higher levels of trait openness to experience strengthened the negative relationships between daily morning quality time with pets and daily workday NA and afterwork incivility. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Why your help is unhelpful: A multistage mediation model exploring mechanisms linking unhelpful workplace social support to work engagement.

Recent occupational health research has begun exploring unhelpful workplace social support (UWSS). UWSS refers to actions taken by a colleague that the recipient believes are intended to be helpful but are perceived as ineffective. For example, a colleague may provide help that is not wanted or do something incorrectly while providing aid. Despite the perceived good intentions of UWSS providers, empirical research suggests that UWSS is a potent workplace demand negatively associated with occupational well-being. The mechanisms that link UWSS and reduced occupational well-being, however, have yet to receive empirical examination. We integrate the job demands-resources model, conservation of resources theory, and basic needs theory to construct a multistage model linking UWSS to reduced work engagement via the frustration of basic psychological needs and the consequent experiencing of negative emotions. We test this model across two studies-a three-wave weekly study (NLevel 1 = 960, NLevel 2 = 320) and a 5-day daily diary study (NLevel 1 = 1,680, NLevel 2 = 336)-and find several significant direct and indirect effects. Across both studies (though at different levels of analysis), partial support was linked to reduced work engagement via the frustration of both the need for competence and relatedness and the experiencing of negative affect, while in Study 2, a daily link between undependable support and work engagement through relatedness frustration and the experiencing of negative affect was found. Implications for research and practice are discussed, and future research directions are offered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

They were uncivil, and now I am too: A dual process model exploring relations between customer incivility and instigated incivility.

Incivility from customers is a common occurrence for employees working in service-oriented organizations. Typically, such incivility engenders instigated mistreatment, both towards customers and colleagues. Not much is understood, however, about the mechanisms underlying the relations between customer incivility and instigated incivility. Answering recent calls from incivility scholars, the present research, drawing from Self-Regulatory Resource Theory and Stressor-Emotion models of workplace behaviour, explored cognitive (i.e., self-regulatory resource depletion) and affective (i.e., negative affect) pathways that would explain relations between customer incivility and instigated incivility towards others. Through two multi-wave studies with different time lags (N1  = 180, weekly lags; N2  = 192, within-week lags) and different operationalizations of the instigated incivility construct (i.e., broad [unidimensional] and narrow [multidimensional]), we find consistent support for the mediating effects of the affective pathway. While our first study finds that customer incivility is linked to broad instigated incivility through negative affect, our second study finds that customer incivility is linked to, more specifically, gossip, exclusionary behaviour, and hostility through negative affect. In both studies, however, no support was found for the mediating effects of the cognitive pathway. Implications for both research and practice are discussed, and future research directions are offered.

"Your help isn't helping me!" Unhelpful workplace social support, strain, and the role of individual differences.

While the reception of social support at work is generally considered a net positive for employees, researchers have identified that particular kinds of social support, such as unhelpful workplace social support (UWSS), tend to evoke stress and contribute to strain for recipients. Although (Gray et al. Work and Stress, 34(4), 359-385, 2020), when validating the novel UWSS measure, uncovered relations between UWSS and various outcomes, more research is needed to further understand the impacts of UWSS. Furthermore, the extant social support literature is currently lacking in its understanding of how individual differences strengthen or weaken the relations such support has with strain. Drawing from the Theory of Stress as Offense to Self (Semmer et al. Occupational Health Science, 3(3), 205-238. 10.1007/s41542-019-00041-5, 2019), we, through two studies (N 1 = 203, N 2 = 277), further explore the relations of UWSS, focusing on behavioral and psychological strain, and examine how these relations are influenced by relevant individual differences (e.g., Big Five traits). Results from our first study replicate key findings from (Gray et al. Work and Stress, 34(4), 359-385, 2020), providing additional validity evidence for the novel measure of UWSS, and demonstrate that UWSS is related to various types of behavioral strain. Our second study shows that the strength of these deleterious relations varies based on characteristics of the recipient of UWSS. Altogether, the present research contributes to the literature on social support as a stressor by elucidating further the effects of UWSS, and, perhaps more importantly, for whom UWSS is particularly deleterious.