The effect of management commitment to safety, and safety communication and feedback on safety behavior of nurses: the moderating role of consideration of future safety consequences

Abstract

This paper proposes that the consideration of future safety consequences would moderate the relationship between management commitment to safety, and safety communication and feedback on nurses’ safety behavior. Survey data was obtained from 229 nurses in Abuja’s secondary healthcare facilities in Nigeria. Bootstrapping was conducted to investigate the standard error of the estimates and the t-values using SmartPLS 3.0. Results showed that management commitment to safety positively relates to safety compliance and safety participation, while safety communication and feedback positively relates to safety participation. Furthermore, the consideration of future safety consequences was found to moderate the relationships between safety communication and feedback, and safety participation. Nevertheless, in the context of management commitment to safety and safety participation, the direction of the moderation was not as hypothesized. The research provides empirical evidence in support of the consideration of future safety consequences as a moderator. This contributes to the utility of self-efficacy theory, field theory, and construal level theory. Furthermore, to achieve optimal safety in the hospital environment, hospital managements should give high priority to nurses’ safety, provide proper safety communication and feedback, and pay closer attention to the consideration of future safety consequences when making decisions on how to improve hospital safety.

Keywords:

• Management commitment to safety
• safety communication and feedback
• consideration of future safety consequences
• safety compliance
• safety participation
• nurses