Environmental Knowledge of and Training Methods for Physicians and Nurses of Pars-e-Jonoubi Company, Iran

Having employees with appropriate environmental behaviors and paying attention to their environmental knowledge and training is an important issue especially for industrial companies. However, the lack of prioritization of this important issue is one of the effective factors in the declining trend ofþ environmental performance improvement of industrial companies. Therefore, the main purpose of the present study was to evaluate the environmental knowledge of physicians and nurses working at Pars-e-Jonoubi Company, Iran, and propose appropriate methods for their environmental training.
This research was a descriptive survey. The statistical population included all physicians and nurses working at Pars-e-Jonoubi Company, from among which 135 individuals were selected through random stratified sampling method and based on the Morgan Table. The data collection tool was a researcher-made environmental knowledge questionnaire based on the view of Frick et al. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, t, independent t, Friedman, and chi-square tests.
The knowledge of physicians and nurses, in their own view, regarding environmental systems was near average (3.1 and 3.3, respectively). Physicians’ and nurses’ knowledge on environmental action was near average (3.2), and below average (2.6), respectively. Their knowledge of effectiveness was higher than average (physicians: 3.8, nurses: 4.3). Generally, physicians estimated their environmental knowledge as slightly higher than average (3.6) and nurses as nearly average (3.2). Moreover, there was a significant difference between theþþ average of the three aforementioned dimensions of their environmental knowledge and the criterion average. In addition, there was a significant difference between the average of the three dimensions of environmental knowledge of physicians and nurses. They also ranked environmental training methods differently. Descriptive statistics and chi-squared test showed that 76 subjects (61%) preferred the compulsive environmental training method and 48 subjects (39%) preferred the optional method.
The results of this research indicated that physicians and nurses working at Pars-e-Jonoubi Company felt the need for obtaining, generally, more environmental knowledge, and specifically, more action-related knowledge. Thus, it is suggested that the necessary requirements be provided for the environmental training of physicians and nurses working at this company according to each group’s preferred training method.