Mental health and quality of life among doctors, nurses and other hospital staff

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that doctors, nurses or other hospital staff may suffer from tremendous stress at work. A high level of work‐related stress might increase vulnerability to mental illness and result in a poor quality of clinical care. This study was conducted in a Taiwanese regional general hospital. Minor psychiatric disorder, depressive disorder and quality of life were assessed for all staff, using self‐rating questionnaires including the Chinese Health Questionnaire 12‐item version, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale brief version. Nearly half of the staff had either a minor psychiatric disorder or depressive disorder. Nurses and pharmacists had the highest prevalence. The risk factors included single/divorced and being a nurse or pharmacist. Quality of life for hospital staff was poor, as compared with the Taiwanese norms, and was even worse for the nurses and pharmacists. In conclusion, the management teams of hospitals should pay more attention to the mental condition of all hospital staff, especially nurses and pharmacists. Adequate staffing, support, counselling or psychological intervention are required for further management, and may logically result in better mental health on the part of the staff and a better quality of care. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Occupational stress and coping resources in physiotherapists: a survey of physiotherapists in three general hospitals

“…A small group considered themselves to be highly stressed. These findings are consistent with other research on stress and burnout in health professionals that found moderate to high levels of stress related to occupational problems [4][5][6][7][8][9].…”

“…Research has shown evidence of high levels of stress in health professionals working in different healthcare settings and the consequent negative effects, not only in the physical and psychological health of these professionals, but also in the quality of care they provide and in the overall quality of healthcare institutions [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”

Personality, individual differences, stress and health

“…The research reported here adopts diverse personality traits and trait-like constructs ranging from constructs from the fi vefactor model (Smith, 2009) to dispositional coping strategies (Chen, Siu, Cooper, & Phillips, 2009;Karademas, Karamvakalis, & Zarogiannos, 2009;Kozora, Ellison, & West, 2009). Many have included individual differences in demographic characteristics as important moderating factors or covariates (Galanakis, Stalikas, Kallia, Karagianni, & Karela, 2009;Karademas et al, 2009;Smith, 2009;Su, Weng, Tsang, & Wu, 2009). There are also diverse and innovative methodological treatment of these variables including interactions between traits/individual differences and environmental/situational factors (Galanakis et al, 2009;Kunst, Bogaerts, & Winkel, 2009;Vaske, Beaver, Wright, Boisvert, & Makarios, 2009) and mediation effects (Karademas et al, 2009).…”

“…The present set of studies are exemplary as they not only account for the potentially confounding effects of these individual difference factors (Chen et al, 2009;Karademas et al, 2009;Kozora et al, 2009;Kunst et al, 2009;Smith, 2009), but also adopt such variables as important factors that determine outcomes. Examples of such research include fi nding an effect of gender on stress mediated by other sociodemographic variables like age and marital status (Galanakis et al, 2009), and identifying similar psychological stress levels in male and female physicians and hospital staff members, which is in contrast with previous fi ndings (Su et al, 2009). The present research therefore highlights the importance of including these individual difference variables in stress and health research.…”

“…The present articles focus on relations between personality and individual difference variables and psychological outcomes such as psychological stress (Galanakis et al, 2009;Kozora et al, 2009;Kunst et al, 2009), mental health (Su et al, 2009), depression (Chen et al, 2009) and coping strategies (Kozora et al, 2009). Such research is important as it provides a formative basis for further investigation into mechanisms and processes.…”