EXAMINATION OF THE PERCEPTION LEVELS OF EMPLOYEES IN HEALTH INSTITUTIONS IN TERMS OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most critical sectors of the economy with its production and trade capacity. It has become an industry area supported by many countries. There are studies with high figures as a budget and patents are obtained. Medical representatives who sell the product in the pharmaceutical market have a great influence on the sale of drugs, with the introduction of the new product and its launch into the market. The main factor that increases sales in the pharmaceutical industry is the capabilities of medical representatives and the trust-based dialogue in communication. For this reason, it is important for medical representatives to have a high level of satisfaction in the business field in terms of ensuring the launch of the drug. Occupational health and safety services should be provided by the employer during the pharmaceutical promotion and work of medical representatives. Medical representatives are exposed to various risk factors during the execution of the business, such as stress, mobbing, job anxiety, filling the quota, and many hospital and doctor visits. In this study, it is tried to examine the factors on which the perception levels of medical representatives operating in the pharmaceutical promotion sector towards occupational health and safety practices are dependent on. A questionnaire was applied to medical representatives and the answers given to the questionnaire were analyzed with the "IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0" program and the "Cronbach Alpha (α)" value was found to be 0.784. The α value being in the range of 0.6<α<0.8 indicates that the study is reliable. To test the accuracy of the 16 hypotheses, t-test, Anova test, Kruskal Wallis test were performed and the results were interpreted. As a result of the study, it was seen that the data obtained were consistent with each other. It was determined that the majority of the medical representatives participating in the study were male, between the ages of 30-39, married, with a bachelor's degree, working in the pharmaceutical industry, and had received basic OHS training. OHS application perceptions are related to the desire to leave the job depending on the increase in years of service; It was determined that it was not related to demographic factors such as gender, marital status, monthly income. It has been determined that medical representatives are most exposed to psychosocial and biological risk factors and they perform a difficult profession.