engleski

Levels of fatigue in nurses at two hospital departments with different workload

The research on problems of workload in hospital departments has confirmed generally accepted opinion that it greatly differs and in some cases it results in chronic fatigue and work exhaustion of nurses, especially when they work in different work shifts. The aim of this study was try to assess the differences in fatigue levels of nurses in two hospital departments, with a low and high workload. The workload evaluations were done independently by 13 head nurses, who ranked 13 hospital departments from the most difficult to the easiest, where the maximal range of the sum of ranks could have been from 13 to 169. Surgery and Infective Diseases department were ranked as second and eleventh, with the sums of ranks 39 and 141, respectively. Eight nurses from the Surgery Department and seven nurses from the Department for Infective Diseases voluntarily participated in this study, which included continuous recordings of R-R intervals for one hour at the beginning and the end of morning and night shifts. At the same time they were administrated the SOFI-questionnaire for fatigue level assessment. The means and standard deviations of R-R intervals showed no differences between the morning and night shifts within the department, but they singled out the beginning of the shifts comparatively more strenuous than the end of shifts. Comparing the two departments, the parameters showed that working stress was much higher in the Surgery nurses at the beginning and at the end of the shifts (morning and night), than in the Infective Diseases Department nurses. Spectral analyses of the R-R interval time series pointed in the same direction, i.e. the modulation of cardiac activity also differentiated the beginning and the end of the shifts, as well as between the two departments. Finally, the estimates of fatigue were the same for the two groups at the beginning of both shifts, but fatigue was found higher in the Surgery nurses at the end of shifts.

fatigue; workload; shiftwork; hospital nurses

nije evidentirano