Self –care Strategies and its Relationship with the Professional Quality of Life of Nurses Working in Educational Hospitals affiliated to Tabriz and Sanandaj University of Medical Sciences in 2015.

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: Self-care, known as a voluntary and training activity, is a public responsibility to save own, family and relative health. Self-care among medical care staff, specially nurses, seems to be very important. Practicing active health care behaviors and self-care strategies could help nurses to resist improper professional conditions. Health promotion is a vital section of nursing reuired each nurse’s life style. Sometimes nurses postpone their own needs to satisfy patients requirements. Each condition of professional setting could be stressful. Such stress and pressures may negatively affect nurses welfare and endanger their health. Method: It is a descriptive, correlational study on 425 nurses attending different sections of medical care hospitals in Sanandaj and Tabriz, including children, surgery, psychology, emergency, etc. sections. All the nurses met the inclusion criteria in the study.Three instruments were used in the present study. First part determined personal, social and occupational information of the nurses, and the second part was a self-care questionnaire. The third was nurses professional life quality survey. Results: Total average of physical self-care was 22.50±7.54, total average of psychological self-care 24.47±8.30, total average excitement self-care 18.30±6.09, total average spiritual self-care 31.05±7.19, total average communication self-care 24.94±11.46, total average professional life self-care 21.40±6.49, total average general balance self-care 4.51±1.49, total average professional life quality to sympathy dimension 35.58±7.56, total average professional life quality to burnout 27.99±3.66, and total average professional life quality to secondary stress was 26.05±5.35. Results suggested a statistically meaningful relationship between professional life quality to sympathy dimension and self-care dimensions, except for physical and communication self-care. Also, a significant relationship between stmpathy and total self-care score. Professional life quality in burnout dimension was meaningfully relative to all dimensions of self-care, and total score of self-care was positively associated to burnout. Secondary stress factor was significantly in association with all dimensions of self-care and there was a meaningful relationship detected between total score from self-care and secondary stress factor. Discussion and conclusion: Results from the present study suggested that due to the nature of nursing profession and working conditions, nurses suffer from burnout and emotional distress and lack a high quality life. In addition, results reported that nurses do not care much about their own health and gain low levels of self-care. Also, results suggested nurses life quality and job satisfaction were strongly correlated. Therefore, improving professional conditions and governing policies on clinical environments may result in high quality services delivered to patients.