Citation

Min-Hui L, Yu-Lung W, Fu-I H, Wan-Yun H (2018) Hierarchical Linear Modeling Application in Analyzing Occupational Injuries Related Factors for Nurses in Taiwan. Int Arch Nurs Health Care 4:101. doi.org/10.23937/2469-5823/1510101

Copyright

© 2018 Min-Hui L, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE | OPEN ACCESS DOI: 10.23937/2469-5823/1510101

Hierarchical Linear Modeling Application in Analyzing Occupational Injuries Related Factors for Nurses in Taiwan

Min-Hui Li1,2, Yu-Lung Wu3, Fu-I Hou4,5 and Wan-Yun Huang1,5*

1Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan

2Graduate Institute of Aerospace and Undersea Medicine, National Defense Medical Center, Taiwan

3Department of Information Management, I-Shou University, Taiwan

4Evergreen Marine Corporation, Taiwan

5Department of Information Engineering, I-Shou University, Taiwan

Abstract

Nurses are prone to occupational injuries due to the nature of their roles in the medical care environment. To narrow the gap in literature, this research analyzes the relevant individual- and hospital-level factors of occupational injuries suffered by nursing personnel in Taiwan by targeting those with occupational injury records in the 2013 National Health Insurance Research Database. A two-level research model consisting of the individual demographic data, hospital category and types, and individual medical expenditures with three hypotheses was formulated. Descriptive statistics were performed and four hierarchical linear models were established and analyzed using SPSS 20.0 and HLM 7.01. The result showed that 5,599 nursing personnel had outpatient treatments for occupational injuries, and made more than three medical visits, with a corresponding US$124 in medical expenditure per person on average in 2013. Specifically, post-operative shock was the major diagnosis among the top ten injuries suffered by nursing personnel. The results of the random regression coefficient model and intercept model indicate that the age of nursing personnel at the individual level and the public/private sector type at the hospital level have positive effects on the individual medical expenditures of nursing personnel. It is recommended that the hospital management should reinforce training of nursing personnel to reduce the occurrence of occupational injuries and corresponding medical expenditures, especially for private hospitals and younger nurses.