Associations Between Workplace Fatigue, Work Characteristics and Health Indicators in Clinical Nurses

• Main Authors: Sih-Ting Lin, 林思婷
• Other Authors: Chien-Tien Su
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/91960156420540070220

碩士 === 臺北醫學大學 === 公共衛生學系暨研究所 === 101 === The poor working conditions for nurses in Taiwan have received a lot of attention in recent years. Taiwan nurses have high work load, looking after excessive number of patients, and their work needs attentive and patience in high level, and often encounter different kinds of personality, physical labor also. Those characteristics put nurses in high risk of burnout. Work stress and burnout are considered the risk factors of physical and mental disorders. Many literatures indicate that burnout could cause cardiovascular diseases, peptic ulcers, physical pain and mental illness. The purpose of the study is to examine the workplace fatigue, work characteristics and health indicators of the clinical nurses practicing in a large-scaled hospital, and to explore the relation ship between workplace fatigue, work characteristics and health indicators, and analyse whether workplace fatigue, work characteristics could predict the adverse outcomes of health indicators. Study data was collected from the clinical nurses practicing in a large-scaled hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. The questionnaires include demographic characteristics, work characteristics, life styles, Chinese version of Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (workplace fatigue), Chinese Version of the Job Content Questionnaire (work characteristics). Health indicators include body mass index, waist circumference, fasting glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein. The questionnaire was collected from March 4 through 29, 2013. Altogether 263 copies of questionnaires were sent out to 16 nursing stations in the hospital, and 216 completed questionnaires were received. The early response rate was 81.13%. To pursue the homogeneity of sample, 4 men were deleted (1.85%), and the final sample number was 212 questionnaires, the final response rate was 80.61%. In this study, we found a high degree of job insecurity has increased 2.524 times the risk of excess waist circumference, but only approaching significance (p = 0.059) after adjusting same variables. Low supervisor support people has increased 3.921 times the risk of Impaired fasting glucose, but only approaching significance (p = 0.054) after adjusting the variables. No other correlations were observed between workplace fatigue after adjusting variables, work characteristics and health indicators. The nurses of the study had higher degrees of workplace fatigue and job demand compared with previous studies, and had poor degree of workplace justice. According to the finding of the study, nurse managers can put “reduce the workload” the priority developing organization policies, for example: to reduce work overtime, to protect wages and benefits, to recruit enough nurses, to improve the work environment, to establish channels of communication with the managements, to reduce exposure in the violence and harassment, to establish fitness equipment, to provide nutritious meals, to establish support groups or a network. As the result, reduction overall situation of fatigue, and enhancement overall situation health can be achived.