Assess the Quality Of Life of Nurses Working In Shift Duties In Public Sector Hospital

Abstract

Working in shifts is a prerequisite for nurses to help patients, jeopardizing their own physical and mental health as well as having an influence on their social and family life, consequently leading to a lack of attentiveness and subpar job performance, putting the patients' lives in peril. This study aims to assess the nurses’ quality of life working in shift duties. 255 nurses participated in a cross-sectional analytical study of a public sector hospital. Participants were selected through consecutive non-probability sampling techniques. Data was collected using demographic characteristics and the WHO SF36 questionnaire and analyzed through SPSS version 21.0. The mean age was 31.6 ±7.3 years with the majority of 67.8% female nurses. The mean experience was 8.7 ± 6.4 years, duty hours 39 ± 11.7 hours, and 31% were working night shifts. Comparing the shift duties with all seven health parameters of quality of life, and general health, social activities energy and emotions were found statistically significant P<0.05. Compared with experience, only general health was found to have a statistically significant association at P<0.005 whereas no other parameter was found to have any association. Age and marital status showed a statistically significant association moreover, education also had an association with 3 health parameters. However, the experience was found to have a statistically significant association with mental health (P<0.007). The current study concluded that the health and quality of life of nurses are negatively impacted by the stress of their shift work. It may also cast a shadow over the delivery of care, which may be one of the variables influencing patients' outcomes.