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This aim of this study was to explore how hospital-based physicians in Sweden experienced the challenges in working conditions related to the provision of care during the initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when hospitals transitioned to pandemic care.

The study has a qualitative design. Twenty-five hospital-based physicians were interviewed about their experiences from working in a hospital while healthcare organisations initially responded to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the empirical material.

The analysis resulted in four themes: involuntary self-management, a self-restrictive bureaucracy, passive occupational safety and health (OSH) management, and information overload. These themes reflect how the physicians perceived their work situation during the pandemic and how they tried to maintain quality care for their patients.

The study gives valuable insights for formulating preparedness in regard to crisis management plans that can secure the provision of care for future emergencies in the healthcare services.

This paper shows that a crisis management plans in the healthcare services should include decision structures and management, measures of risk assessment and OSH management, and the maintenance of personnel wellbeing. A prepared healthcare management can preserve quality care delivery while under crisis.

Firefighters are daily confronted with adverse, unpredictable and demanding situations. It is a dangerous profession that puts firefighters at risk of developing burnout. Although the literature has already identified personal and work-related factors of burnout, the examination of specific factors explaining burnout among volunteer and career firefighters is still needed. The purpose of this study is to investigate the explaining role of personal and work-related factors on volunteer and career firefighters’ burnout.

A nonrandom convenience sample of 250 firefighters (67% volunteer; M_age = 31.88) completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, the Proactive Coping Scale and a standard of living subscale item. Hierarchical multiple linear regression models were tested. Fisher’s criterion was considered, with p-values lower than 0.05 interpreted as statistically significant.

Personal and work-related factors accounted for 18% of volunteer and 31% of career firefighters’ variations in burnout. Personal factors offered a greater contribution explaining volunteer and career firefighters’ burnout. Still, variations in the role played by age, family responsibilities, proactive coping and satisfaction with standard of living on burnout were found among volunteer and career firefighters. Taking the work-related factors into account, working in rotative shifts constituted a risk factor for career firefighters’ burnout.

This study advances the understanding about the role of personal and work-related factors in volunteer and career firefighters’ burnout.

This study adds information about specific factors explaining burnout among voluntary and career firefighters. It deepens existing knowledge on variations in the role played by age, family responsibilities, work conditions, proactive coping and satisfaction with standard of living on the burnout of volunteer and career firefighters.

Process facilitation as part of a complex intervention for changing or improving practices within workplaces is becoming a common work method. The aim of this study was to investigate what characterizes the process-facilitating role in a complex intervention.

The present study focuses on a complex work environment intervention targeting eight organizational units (workplaces) in the Swedish healthcare sector. The study applies a mixed-method approach and has been carried out in two steps. First, a qualitative process evaluation was performed. Secondly, an evaluation was conducted to see to what extent these identified conditions and mechanisms affected the quantitative intervention effect in term of sickness absence.

The analysis shows that the facilitating role consisted of three overlapping and partially iterative phases. These phases involved different activities for the facilitating role. Depending on how the facilitating role and the intervention were designed, various supporting conditions were found to significantly affect the outcome of the intervention measured as the total sickness absence.

It is concluded that the facilitation is not static or fixed during the change process. Instead, the facilitation role develops and emerges through the process of support during the different implementation phases.

The facilitative role of performing support is based on a combination of support role activities and expert role activities. The support role focuses on support activities, while the expert role includes capacity building through knowledge- and legitimacy-oriented activities.

This study contributes to earlier research by developing a methodological approach for carrying out process facilitation in complex interventions.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) preservation efforts in South Africa, with a focus on the National Recordal System and the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Documentation Centres (IKSDCs) across South Africa.

Anchored in the interpretivist paradigm, the qualitative research approach was adopted to explore the objectives of the study. The multiple case study method was considered appropriate and adopted for the study. The data for this study was collected through comprehensive face-to-face interviews and Web content analysis. The population of the study consisted of the staff at the IKSDCs in the selected academic institutions. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the following set of participants in each academic institution: IKS managers/coordinators, digitization officers and online collection administrators.

The findings provide an in-depth understanding of the IKS landscape in South Africa. The findings and recommendations of this paper would be useful to researchers who wish to know more about digitization efforts in South Africa. It would also be useful to all stakeholders and policymakers.

The paper brings to the fore the efforts of the South African government in preserving IKS through documentation and digitization. The paper highlights the sources of indigenous knowledge, types of indigenous knowledge captured, how the indigenous knowledge is ingested in the repositories and how the data is captured. Generally, the roles of the IKSDCs in the capture and preservation of IKS are highlighted.

The aim of this study was to explore the organizational and social prerequisites for employees' participative and rule-compliant information security behaviour in Swedish nuclear power production and its related industry. These industries are high-risk activities that must be meticulously secured. Protecting the information security in the related organizations is an essential aspect of this.

Individual in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 employees in two organizations within the nuclear power industry in Sweden.

We found that prerequisites for employees' participative and rule-compliant information security behaviour could be categorized into structural, social and individual aspects. Structural aspects included well-adapted rules, knowledge support and resources. Social aspects included a supportive organizational culture, collaboration and adequate resources, and individual aspects included individual responsibility.

The qualitative approach of the study provided comprehensive descriptions of the identified preconditions. The results may thus enable organizations to better promote conditions important for information security in a high-risk industry.

Environmental degradation resulting from human activities may adversely affect human health in multiple ways. Until now, policies aimed at mitigating environmental problems such as climate change, environmental pollution and damage to biodiversity have failed to clearly identify and drive the potential benefits of these policies on health. The conducted study assesses and demonstrates how specific environmental policies and instruments influence perceived human health in order to ensure input for a data-driven decision process.

The study was conducted for the 2004–2020 period in European Union (EU) countries with the use of dynamic panel data modeling. Verification of specific policies' impact on dependent variables allows to indicate this their effectiveness and importance. As a result of the computed dynamic panel data models, it has been confirmed that a number of significant and meaningful relationships between the self-perceived health index and environmental variables can be identified.

There is a strong positive impact of environmental taxation on the health index, and the strength of this relationship causes effects to be observed in the very short term, even the following year. In addition, the development of renewable energy sources (RES) and the elimination of fossil fuels from the energy mix exert positive, although milder, effects on health. The reduction of ammonia emissions from agriculture and reducing noise pollution are other health-supporting factors that have been shown to be statistically valid. Results allow to identify the most efficient policies in the analyzed area in order to introduce those with the best results or a mix of such measures.

The results of the authors' research clearly indicate the health benefits of measures primarily aimed at improving environmental factors, such as environmental taxes in general. The authors have also discovered an unexpected negative impact of an increase in the share of energy taxes in total taxes on the health index. The presented study opens several possibilities for further investigation, especially in the context of the rapidly changing geopolitical environment and global efforts to respond to environmental and health challenges. The authors believe that the outcome of the authors' study may provide new arguments to policymakers pursuing solutions that are not always easily acceptable by the public.

The aim was to study how the working-age population's mental symptoms had a relation to the using of the Internet. In addition, the aim was to analyze how the mental symptoms had a relation to background information. The study was carried out as a cross-sectional study by posting a questionnaire to 15,000 working-age (18-65) Finns. Mental symptoms of responses (6121) were analysed using the model factors age, gender and use of the Internet. Only 0.06% mentioned that they were somehow addicted to the Internet. Based on statistical analyses, age and marital status had an influence on many mental symptoms. The use of the Internet at leisure had an influence on substance addiction and fear situations. The importance of the Internet only had an influence on the fear situations. In the future it will be essential to take into account that the use of the internet can affect mental symptoms.

This study aims to describe and evaluate the impact of a participatory age-management intervention on the knowledge, awareness and engagement of line managers and their HR partners from six health-care organizations in Sweden.

The learning workshops consisted of lectures, discussions, feedback and exchange of experiences with colleagues and invited experts. A total of 19 participants were interviewed six months after the final workshop, and qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcribed interviews.

The intervention design produced promising results in improving line managers’ and HR partners’ knowledge and increasing awareness and engagement. On some occasions, the participants also initiated changes in organizational policies and practices. However, the intervention primarily became a personal learning experience as participants lacked resources and mandates to initiate change in their daily work. To stimulate engagement and change at the organizational level, the authors believe that an intervention must receive support from higher managers, be anchored at the workplace and be aligned with the organization’s goals; moreover, participants must be provided with sufficient resources and mandates to coordinate the implementation of age-management strategies.

Prolonged working life policies and skill shortages are affecting organizations and societies, and for many employers, there are strong reasons for developing strategies to attract, recruit and retain older workers.

This study offers lessons and guidance for future workplace interventions to attract, recruit and retain older workers.

The interconnections between climate change and health are well studied. However, there is a perceived need for studies that examine how responses to health hazards (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, ozone layer effects, allergens, mental health and vector-borne diseases) may assist in reducing their impacts. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence on health responses to climate hazards and list some measures to address them.

A mixed literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original online survey were undertaken on 140 participants from 55 countries spread across all geographical regions.

The bibliometric analysis identified that most climate-related health hazards are associated with extreme weather events. However, only one-third of the investigated papers specifically analysed the connections between climate change and health hazards, revealing a thematic gap. Also, although Africa is highly affected by climate change, only 5% of the assessed studies focused on this continent. Many respondents to the survey indicated “heat distress” as a significant vulnerability. The survey also identified social determinants relevant to climate-induced health vulnerabilities, such as socioeconomic and environmental factors, infrastructure and pre-existing health conditions. Most respondents agree that policies and regulations are the most effective adaptation tools to address the public health hazards triggered by climate change. This paper presents some suggestions for optimising public health responses to health hazards associated with climate change, such as the inclusion of climate-related components in public health policies, setting up monitoring systems to assess the extent to which specific climate events may pose a health threat, establishing plans to cope with the health implications of heatwaves, increased measures to protect vulnerable groups and education and awareness-raising initiatives to reduce the overall vulnerability of the population to climate-related health hazards. These measures may assist the ongoing global efforts to understand better – and cope with – the impacts of climate change on health.

The combination of a literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original world survey identified and presented a wide range of responses.

The aim of the study was to understand the social and organisational factors in the workplace that shape managers' actions and attitudes towards workers with repeated short-term sickness absence.

This was a qualitative interview study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 managers at 15 different workplaces. The analysis had an abductive approach, using thematic analysis which focused on the latent content of managers attitudes towards employees with repeated short-term sickness absence.

Results indicate that the managers' views of people on short-term sick leave shift and move through several phases, which was analysed as they were acts in a play, where their given roles are prescribing which actions to take given the available resources for acting these parts. These acts depict an increasingly controlling attitude, where the sick leave is ultimately seen as an individual problem best managed by repressive tactics.

Role theory offers the possibility to analyse managers' attitudes and behaviours by considering the workplace and the manager-employee relationship as regulated by norms and organisational factors.