The National Standard of Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace: A Psychometric and Descriptive Study of the Nursing Workforce in British Columbia Hospitals

Abstract

Background

In 2013, the Mental Health Commission of Canada created a National Standard that includes 13 workplace factors associated with employee mental health.

Purpose

This study (a) examined the psychometric properties of Guarding Minds at Work (GMW), the instrument used to measure the Standard’s 13 workplace factors and (b) assessed BC nurses’ workplace risk factors.

Methods

A province-wide survey study of 3,077 direct care nurses working in acute care settings was conducted.

Results

Subscale internal consistencies were acceptable. For most items, the original alphas were greater than the alpha-if-item-deleted. All corrected item-subtotal correlations were moderate to high. The 13-factor structure showed an adequate model fit based on absolute fit indices (SRMR = 0.057 and RMSEA = 0.054) but the relative fit indices were lower than the recommended cutoff (CFI = 0.827 and TLI = 0.815). Nurses identified nine of the 13 GMW factors as serious or significant concern in their workplace.

Conclusions

The findings were consistent with a plethora of evidence pointing to shortcomings in nurses’ work environments. This was the first study partially supporting the reliability and validity of the GMW. More work is required to refine the GMW and gain a better understanding of its psychometric properties.

Keywords

Workplace conditions practice environment mental health safety nursing psychometric validity reliability

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