Nurses' Work-Related Fatigue and Related Factors

Friday, 28 July 2017

Chi-Hui Chuang, MS
Department of Nursing, Chi Mei Medical Center, Tainan City, Taiwan
Yi Liu, PhD
School of Nursing, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Nurses' Work-related Fatigue and Related factors

Background: Fatigue not only is commonly seen in clinical patients but also prevails in healthy population. Fatigue can lead to poor performance, absenteeism, and medical adverse events. It is one of the main causes of nurses’ intention to leave. Therefore, to explore the main factors associated with the work-related fatigue among nurses would help the establishment of fatigue reduction strategies.

Objective: To investigate work related fatigue and the related factors. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted and a structured questionnaire survey was applied. The questionnaires were distributed to 11 wards in a district hospital and a medical center. A total of 276 valid questionnaires was obtained. IBM SPSS version 20 was used for data analysis.

Results: The main work related fatigue was acute fatigue among nurses. Physical work load, fatigue recovery, work overtime, work frustrations and work unit were significant predictors of acute fatigue.

Work overtime, recover are significant predictors. Overtime in nursing staff is generally discussed. Because of the implementation of electronic signatures, no overtime in this study sample. Because of overtime will reduce the rest time, reduce the nursing staff fatigue recovery.

According to the results of the study, the general medical ward work fatigue is higher than intensive care unit. According to the literatures, equipment in intensive care unit are more than general ward. Patients’ condition with high complexity in intensive care unit. But the division in general ward is less specific. In Taiwan's general wards, 1 nurse take care of 8 patients, more at night shift. Each nurse at intensive care unit care take care of 2-3 patients.

Conclusion: Managers should implement strategies to limit overtime and performed self-scheduling method so that nurses can have more time for recovery. Based on different workload, manager reassign work to nurses/and regularly screen nurses’work-related fatigue. Be aware of the sources of nurses’work frustration and then make improvement on work environment.