Contributing influences of work environment on sleep quantity and quality of nursing assistants in long-term care facilities: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

The effect of shift work on nurses’ sleep is well-studied, but there are other challenging aspects of health care work that might also affect the sleep of direct caregivers. This study examined the influence of the long-term care work environment on sleep quantity and quality of nursing assistants. A cross-sectional survey collected data from 650 nursing assistants in 15 long-term care facilities; 46% reported short sleep duration and 23% reported poor sleep quality. A simple additive index of the number of beneficial work features (up to 7) was constructed for analysis with Poisson regression. With each unit increase of beneficial work features, nursing assistants were 7% less likely to report short sleep duration and 17% less likely to report poor sleep quality. These results suggest that effective workplace interventions should address a variety of work stressors, not only work schedule arrangements, in order to improve nursing assistants’ sleep health.

Do sleep disturbances mediate the association between work‐family conflict and depressive symptoms among nurses? A cross‐sectional study

“…The JCQ subscales have demonstrated good validity and acceptable reliability in large study populations from six countries (Karasek et al., ). The reliabilities (Cronbach's alpha) of these subscales were .85 (physical demands), .63 (psychological demands), .56 (decision authority) and .75 (social support) for this study sample, which were similar to their reliabilities reported in a previous study with nursing assistants (Zhang, Punnett, Phillips McEnany, & Gore, ). Participants’ usual work shift was collected, and choices were 8 hr day, 8 hr evening, 8 hr night, 12 hr day, 12 hr evening (including work schedules of 9 a.m.–9 p.m. 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and 12 p.m.–12 a.m.) and 12 hr night shifts.…”

“…A final limitation was the low reliabilities of the work‐family conflict, psychological demands and decision authority scales in the study sample. Even though the reliabilities of these scales reported in this study were similar to those reported in a previous study with nursing assistants (Zhang et al., ), further assessment and refinement of these scales are needed to improve the internal validity of the study findings.…”

“…The JCQ subscales have demonstrated good validity and acceptable reliability in large study populations from six countries (Karasek et al, 1998). The reliabilities (Cronbach's alpha) of these subscales were .85 (physical demands), .63 (psychological demands), .56 (decision authority) and .75 (social support) for this study sample, which were similar to their reliabilities reported in a previous study with nursing assistants (Zhang, Punnett, Phillips McEnany, & Gore, 2016)…”

“…Nurses usually experience high work stress from multiple sources (Happell et al., ; Jennings, ), which can lead to poor physical and mental health outcomes. Nurses’ mental health deserves considerable attention from administrators because it could be associated with their job satisfaction (Faragher, Cass, & Cooper, ), intention to turnover (Zhang et al., ), quality of care delivery, and patient safety and health.…”

“…Nurses' mental health deserves considerable attention from administrators because it could be associated with their job satisfaction (Faragher, Cass, & Cooper, 2005), intention to turnover (Zhang et al, 2016), quality of care delivery, and patient safety and health.…”