Our health description was characterized by complexity, but the instrument is a short salutogenic health indicator scale. The shortness increases the usability. The instrument seems to be able to offset the current problem of there being a lack of salutogenic health measurement instruments. The results indicate that further testing is justified.

The aim of this study was to explore healthcare workers' opinions on workplace related health resources relevant to promotion of their health. Participants: 16 registered nurses and 19 assistant nurses, from a medical emergency ward at a medium sized hospital in the south of Sweden, participated in the study. Methods: Eight focus group interviews were conducted, the material was condensed and conventional qualitative content analysis was used to elicit and identify patterns in the expressed opinions of the participants. Results: The analysis yielded four themes that were labelled the reward, the team, the mission and the context. An explanatory model was constructed consisting of concentric circles, with the reward at the core. The qualitative analysis also revealed two divergent patterns; some of the participants associated positive health with stability while others referred to flexibility. Conclusions: The results from this study have contributed to the body of knowledge regarding salutogenic health indicators in the field of work and health research in particular as well as in health promotion in general. The findings show that individuals can have diverse responses to any given work situation, and this should be taken into account before implementation of salutogenic health promotion programs.

BackgroundNursing is a constant balance between strain and stimulation and work and health research with a positive reference point has been recommended. A health-promoting circumstance for subjective experience is flow, which is a psychological state, when individuals concurrently experience happiness, motivation and cognitive efficiency. Flow situations can be identified through individuals' estimates of perceived challenge and skills. There is, to the best of our knowledge, no published study of flow among health care staff. The aim of this study was to identify flow-situations and study work-related activities and individual factors associated with flow situations, during everyday practice at a medical emergency ward in Sweden, in order to increase the knowledge on salutogenic health-promoting factors.MethodsThe respondents consisted of 17 assistant nurses and 14 registered nurses, who randomly and repeatedly answered a small questionnaire, through an experience sampling method, during everyday nursing practice. The study resulted in 497 observations. Flow situations were defined as an exact match between a high challenge and skill estimation and logistic regression models were used to study different variables association to flow situations.ResultsThe health care staff spent most of its working time in individual nursing care and administrative and communicative duties. The assistant nurses were more often occupied in individual nursing care, while the registered nurses were more involved in medical care and administrative and communicative duties. The study resulted in 11.5% observations of flow situations but the relative number of flow situations varied between none to 55% among the participants. Flow situations were positively related to medical care activities and individual cognitive resources. Taking a break was also positively associated with flow situations among the assistant nurses.ConclusionsThe result showed opportunities for work-related interventions, with an adherent increase in flow situations, opportunity for experience of flow and work-related health among the nursing staff in general and among the assistant nurses in particular.