Assessment of workload effect on nursing occupational accidents in hospitals of Kashan, Iran

Abstract

Background: Nurses often experience occupational accidents and injuries. The mental workload is one of the factors that often cause tiredness. Perilous behaviors possibly occur more in tired persons resulting in injuries. The aim of the study was to evaluate the correlation between mental workload and nursing occupational accidents in public hospitals of Kashan, as well as factors affecting them. Methods: The analytic-descriptive study described herein consisted of nursing staff from public hospitals of Kashan, Iran. Information was collected using a three-part questionnaire from a selected clustery of 406 nursing personnel in 2016. The questionnaire was used to collect demographics, assess mental workload (per the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index (NASA-TLX)), and assess frequency of accidents. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version 16. Results: A total of 455 occupational accidents were recorded for 2016 with about 2.27±1.21 accidents per nurse.

The Mental Workload and Its Correlated Factors in Nurses Working in Intensive Care Units

“…In the current study, the Mean±SD MW of ICU nurses was reported 70.21±12.4. In the studies of Hoonakker et al [2], Zakerian et al [3], and Malekpour et al [16], the mean MW was higher, while Giahi et al [5] and Sarsangi et al [10] reported lower values compared with those of the current study. All the mentioned studies used the same study tools like ours.…”

“…Its direct impacts on patient care may be related to the insufficient time for caring duties, which increases the mortality rate of patients. Its indirect impacts on patient's safety are via affecting communication, reducing job satisfaction and motivation, and causing burnout in nurses [10]. MW is associated with depression, anger, and interpersonal sensitivities [7].…”

“…MW is associated with depression, anger, and interpersonal sensitivities [7]. Since MW has a direct relationship with the person's performance and is one of the factors affecting the health, safety, and comfort of individuals, the concept of MW and its effects are one of the main topics of organizational behavior [10]. In this regard, the current study aimed at evaluating MW and its related factors in nurses working in the ICUs.…”

“…It is simply the amount of mental effort that one puts into a task [5,8,9], and requires actions such as concentration, reminder, decision making, and attention [8], and is essentially related to the individual's mental abilities and how the information is received and processed, and at the end leads to decision making and action [5]. In other words, MW is a level of cognitive need or an analytical effort required by an individual to fulfill the physical, spatial, and environmental demands of a specific task [10].…”

Occupational accidents with biological material in a school hospital

“…In nursing, there is a predominance of women who need to reconcile the profession with household chores and child care (35,36) . This excess of activities and high mental load of work can cause fatigue and compromise the safe development of activities, resulting in OA in health professionals (22,37) . Therefore, in this context, it is probable that the overload caused by the double journey caused fatigue, lack of attention during procedures and favored increase of accidents.…”