Occupational health and safety in private health care organizations

Radical changes in production technologies have increased the number of means of production, while on the other hand they have given rise to various problems on health and security. While efforts to eliminate the economic and social losses caused by work- related accidents, occupational diseases and insecure working environment imply a human approach for working people, on the other hand they imply an economic approach for the employer, who works in a highly competitive environment. Barriers preventing the working people to work in a healthy and safe environment continue to be the most important problems faced in Human Resources management. Occupational health and safety measures have an important impact on prevention of work-related accidents and occupational diseases. As a matter of fact, ?occupational health and safety? (OHS) measures have now become more important than the basic health care of workers in narrow sense. While healthcare employees provide service to patients, they are exposed to a series of risks and dangers originating from the very nature of the service they provide. In this respect, like those all over the world, also in Turkey, healthcare organizations range among the most risky organizations in terms of health and safety. In other words, work accidents and professional diseases occurring in this field bring about more serious and even lethal consequences than those occurring in other sectors. Generally in all fields of working life, particularly in field of healthcare, OHS brings responsibilities to the state, employer and the employees themselves. Thus, the main question tackled throughout the study is ?to what extent do the employees working in field of healthcare, their employers and the state meet the requirements of their responsibilities?? Probable answers to this question were searched by means of a fieldwork explained in the fourth chapter of the study. The fieldwork was made by means of a questionnaire carried out among the nurses working in private hospitals of the province of Izmir. With this research, while data on responsibilities of the state, employees and employers were analyzed statistically by means of hypotheses, risks and perils experienced by the sample group were assessed in terms of OHS.