Factors Affecting Physical and Mental Fatigue among Female Hospital Nurses: The Korea Nurses’ Health Study

Abstract

Nurses often experience work-related physical and mental fatigue. This study sought to identify the levels of physical and mental fatigue present among Korean female nurses and discern factors influencing their onset. This cross-sectional study analyzed data from the Korea Nurses’ Health Study (KNHS). A total of 14,839 hospital nurses were assessed by hierarchical regression analysis. The mean scores of physical and mental fatigue were 12.57 and 5.79 points, respectively. After adjusting for confounding variables, the work department had a significant influence on both physical and mental fatigue, that is, nurses working in special care units experienced greater degrees of both physical and mental fatigue than those working in general units. Nurse fatigue is an important consideration to monitor to ensure nurses’ continued wellbeing as well as good patient safety levels. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a strategy to mitigate nursing fatigue while considering the characteristics of specific departments. In nursing practice, the introduction of a counseling program and guarantee of rest time that can alleviate the mental and physical fatigue of nurses working in special care units should be considered.

Work-related musculoskeletal symptoms among Iranian nurses and their relationship with fatigue: a cross-sectional study

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Pandemic fatigue and clinical nurses’ mental health, sleep quality and job contentment during the covid‐19 pandemic: The mediating role of resilience

“…Collectively, these elements potentially increase nurses' risk of developing pandemic fatigue, adversely affecting their overall health and clinical performance and eventually leading to poor nursing care provision and poorer patient outcomes (del Carmen Giménez-Espert et al, 2020;. Studies have demonstrated that a greater proportion of nurses, particularly those directly taking care of COVID-19 patients, experienced a significant amount of fatigue during the peak of the pandemic (Jang et al, 2021). The incidence of moderate-to-high fatigue levels during the pandemic ranged from 35.06% to 72.2%, with more nurses experiencing physical fatigue than mental fatigue (Zhan et al, 2020;Zou et al, 2021).…”

Development and Evaluation of Psychometric Properties Regarding the Whole Person Health Scale for Employees of Hospital to Emphasize the Importance of Health Awareness of the Workers in the Hospital

“…Most studies about employees working in hospitals were focused on nurses, physicians, and other medical professionals, but did not include administrative staff or general staff. Moreover, the focus of research often concerned burnout, demoralization, and fatigue [6][7][8]12]. In Kenya, Muthuri et al concerned health-related quality of life among healthcare workers to develop and implement national policies and programs for healthcare works [13].…”

“…Medical institutions have to pay more attention to the importance of physical and mental health of medical staff because it is not only a simple self-care issue, but also affects the quality of patient care. Previous studies on medical and health working scenarios focused heavily on their negative impacts such as high work pressure, emotional exhaustion, fatigue, and low job satisfaction among hospital employees, and rarely explored them from a positive perspective except quality of life [11][12][13][14]. In addition, most studies focused on nursing staff rather than all hospital employees.…”