Westat experts will attend and present on workplace safety research at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM) in Washington, DC, June 4-7, 2022. This important conference brings together the health services research community to share new research and innovative methods and discuss the impact of health services research on health policy and practice.

Westat is proud to be a gold sponsor. Visit us in the exhibit hall to learn about our health policy research and careers with us.

On Sunday, June 5, 2022, at 12:30 pm (ET), in the Health Workers Safety, Burnout, and Wellbeing session (Walter E. Washington Convention Center Room 145 A/B), Westat staff will present the following:

Katarzyna Zebrak, Naomi Yount, Joann Sorra, Theresa Famolaro, and Laura Gray. (Poster). Development and Pilot Test of Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.

The Westat team published a journal article in June 2022 about the Workplace Safety Supplemental Items in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health as part of a Special Issue on Patient Safety Culture in Hospitals: Development, Pilot Study, and Psychometric Analysis of the AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for Hospitals.

The paper presented results from a pilot study conducted in 28 U.S. hospitals with 7,000+ providers and staff, and found that the survey items and composite measures demonstrated good construct validity and reliability measuring different, yet related, aspects of workplace safety culture in hospitals. Almost 1/3 of providers and staff in the study indicated experiencing at least 1 symptom of burnout. Furthermore, experiencing burnout was related to lower protection from workplace hazards and lower support for workplace safety from supervisors, managers, or clinical leaders and from hospital management.