Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Commentary

Psychosocial Safety Climate: Role and Significance in Aged Care

¹School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy, University of South Australia, Australia

²WORKXtra Physiotherapy, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

³Central Psychology Services, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

*Corresponding Author:

Peter C Winwood
School of Psychology
Social Work and Social Policy
University of South Australia, Australia
Tel: 61883379904
E-mail: pwinwood@internode.on.net

Received date: August 13, 2013; Accepted date: October 21, 2013; Published date: October 29, 2013

Citation: Winwood PC, Bowden R, Stevens F (2013) Psychosocial Safety Climate: Role and Significance in Aged Care. Occup Med Health Aff 1:135. doi: 10.4172/2329-6879.1000135

Copyright: © 2013 Winwood PC, 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.

Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) is increasingly being recognised as a ‘cause of causes’ and a significant mediator/moderator of a number of important workplace behaviours and attitudes including; morale, cynicism,engagement, commitment and absenteeism. In this paper we examine the role of PSC within the Aged Care industry in Australia. Currently this industry is notable for having the very high levels of workplace injury and compensation claims, particularly among unregistered carers. Our results indicate that there is a clear economic argument for owners and managers of aged care facilities to address issues of suboptimal PSC within their facilities as a priority. Failure to do so can result in a progressive download spiral of poor performance, low commitment, staff turnover (and rehiring costs) associated with high injury and compensation costs.