The Workload And Its Correlation with Health Anxiety Among Nurses Working In Psychiatric Wards Of Tabriz Razi Hospital

Abstract

Abstract

Introduction: Health care workers, especially nurses, face high workloads due to direct exposure to patients in stressful hospital environments and labor shortages. Workload and related stress affect people's health, safety, and comfort and are directly related to people's performance. Also, nurses in psychiatric wards also suffer from a high workload due to the characteristics of patients in these wards. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the workload and its correlation with health anxiety in nurses working in the psychiatric wards of Razi Hospital in Tabriz. Method: In this cross-sectional study, 206 nurses working in Razi Hospital in Tabriz were included in the study using census sampling. In the present study, three tools were used to collect data: NASA_TLX workload, Salkowski Health Anxiety Questionnaire, and Social Demographic Questionnaire. Data were collected from winter to spring 2021, and analyzed using SPSS software version 21 and according to Pearson and Spearman correlation tests. Findings: The mean age of participants was 32.4±5.76 and most of the nurses participating in the study were female (60.2%), married (56.3%), and had a bachelor's degree (90.3%). According to the findings of the study, there was no significant relationship between the mean workload score and the mean score of health anxiety, and only a positive and significant relationship was observed between workload and health anxiety only in the time dimension (p≤0.05). Also, there was a significant relationship between the mean scores of workloads and health anxiety with the variables of shift work, marital status, and education level (p≤0.05), so the mean scores of workloads and health anxiety in married people and night shift were high. Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, high workload and low score of health anxiety by nurses and also the lack of a significant relationship between the two variables, further studies in the field of workload and health anxiety in nurses are suggested. Also, due to the high workload of nurses, in order to improve and increase the areas of care and health of nurses, it is necessary for managers and nursing planners to plan to reduce the workload of nurses.