Quality of working life and organizational commitment of Iranian pre-hospital paramedic employees during the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak

ABSTRACT

The present study aims to examine the relationship between the quality of working life and organizational commitment of prehospital paramedic personnel in Emergency Medical Systems affiliated to the Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Iran during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2020, in 12 emergency bases supervised by Kerman University of Medical Sciences and 200 participants were randomly selected according to the table of Morgan. Meyer and Allen's organizational commitment questionnaires and Bolton's quality of working life questionnaire were used in the study. Normative commitment component among other organizational commitment components had the highest mean score, 3.51 ± 1.06 and emotional commitment component had the lowest average, 3.31 ± 0.83. Among the factors of working life quality, the skill development opportunities and continuous learning had the highest mean score, 3.37 ± 0.87 and the wage and material benefits component had the lowest average, 1.65 ± 1.08. There was a significant relationship between the organizational commitment and quality of working life P = 0.01, r = 0.45. According to the results of the present research, to increase the quality of working life and organizational commitment of Emergency Medical personnel, more emphasis should be placed on the employee participation in terms of decision-making, skill development opportunities, continuous learning and job security.

KEYWORDS:

• Quality of working life
• organization
• commitment
• pre-hospital
• paramedic
• COVID-19

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Emergency Management Center officials of Kerman University of Medical Sciences as well as Nursing Organization for providing the opportunity to carry on this research.

We are grateful to the officials of emergencies management center of Kerman University of Medical sciences as well as Nursing Organization for providing the research opportunity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Contributors

All authors equally contributed to this project and research. Dr. Sheikhbardsiri and Dr. Aminizadeh conceived the presented idea. Salahi and Sarhadi developed the theory and performed the computations. Parya Jangipour Afshar and Amin Saberinia verified the analytical methods. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohsen Aminizadeh

Mohsen Aminizadeh is PhD of health in emergencies and disasters at medical University of Kerman. He has more than 17 years of work experience in nursing working in hospital emergency department and emergency medical transport services. He also has more than 20 publications including articles and books.

Amin Saberinia

Amin Saberinia is an associate professor of the Medical University of shahid Beheshti for more than 10 years. he is expert in emergency medicine and over 14 years activity in this area as a researcher.

Sahar Salahi

Sahar Salahi is faculty member of nursing in Yasooj Islamic Azad University, she has more than ten years of work experience in nursing in hospital emergency department.

Mahdeyeh Sarhadi

Mahdeyeh Sarhadi is a PhD candidate in nursing of from Kerman University of Medical Sciences. She has more than 10 publications including articles and books in related to nursing.

Hojjat Sheikhbardsiri

Hojjat Sheikhbardesiri is PhD of health in emergencies and disasters management at medical University of Kerman. He has more than 16 years of work experience in nursing working in hospital emergency department and emergency medical transport services. He also has more than 50 publications including articles and books.