Toward a social structural understanding of occupational hazards in public health

An exploratory study was completed in 1992 in five autonomous public health unit organizations situated in urban and rural settings in northern, central, and southern regions of the Province of Alberta, Canada, with a sample of 57 staff and managerial public health nurses. Self-administered questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and moderated focus groups were used in a two-stage data collection procedure to describe subjects' perceived work hazards, conceptualize the organizational factors underlying their work hazards, and report their suggestions for change. Frequency distributions and descriptive statistics were obtained for the perceived work hazards. Results of the constant comparative method of analysis indicate that organizational factors are inseparable from the hazards perceived by subjects in both their physical and psychosocial work environments. Moreover, elements of a grounded theory of organizational hazard surveillance emerge from the data. Running throughout the elements (conceptual categories derived from interview data) is the theme of power and dependency. The social structural factors underlying occupational hazards are discussed in terms of the organizational factors associated with the safety, physical, ergonomic, and biological hazards perceived by subjects in their physical work environments.