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Sleep Quality and Life Quality in Female Shift-Work Nurses in Taiwan

Tuesday, 13 July 2010: 3:45 PM

Wen-Chii Tzeng, PhD
School of Nursing, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will understand that helping nurses to recognise and improve their own sleep quality and life quality should be included in educational programs.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will consider the importance of the personal needs and the ability to adapt to shift work to manage their own life.

Purpose: The aims of this paper are to report the findings of a study that explored factors influencing the quality of sleep and quality of life among nurses in Taiwan and examined associations between their sleep quality and quality of life.

Methods: A cross-sectional design study was conducted in April 2008 with a convenience sample of 435 female nurses from five regional hospitals in Taiwan. Data were collected on sleep quality and quality of life using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument-BREF Taiwan version, respectively. Data were analysed by descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, analysis of variance, and Pearson correlations.

Results: The majority of female shift workers (57%) had global sleep-quality scores >5, indicating poor sleep, and all mean scores in four domains of the quality-of-life measure were significantly lower than those of females in Taiwan’s general population. Scores for poor sleep quality and quality of life were related to premenstrual dysphoria, occupational injury, illness, and medication use. In addition, the associations between nurses’ scores on the sleep-quality and quality-of-life scales were significantly, inversely correlated.

Conclusion: The majority of shift-work nurses experienced poor sleep quality and poor quality of life. However, nurses who reported better sleep quality had better quality of life.

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