Mental Health of Nurses Employed in Surgical and Non-invasive Treatment Wards

Abstract

Introduction. The nursing profession requires employees to be highly resistant to stress. Assisting patients in their experience of pain, illness, helplessness is a stressful experience can be a traumatic experience especially in the face of an immediate threat to a patient’s life. Nursing staff working in treatment wards is exposed to particularly intense stress, in contact with a patient experiencing fear of a surgery and a patient after a surgery experiencing postoperative pain and requiring specialist care. Aim. The exploratory goal of the study was to diagnose the level of mental health in case of the nurses working in two types of wards: surgical and non-invasive treatment ones. The nurses working in hospital non-invasive treatment wards were expected to have better mental health than the ones working in treatment units. Material and Methods. An anonymous questionnaire survey was conducted among N=244 nurses of randomly selected hospital wards in a district town in the north of Poland. In the study there were used: General Health Questionnaire GHQ-28 by D. Goldberg and Life Satisfaction Scale by E. Diener and co-workers. Results. Contrary to the expectations, nurses from non-invasive treatment wards experienced stronger anxiety, insomnia, social dysfunction and lower life satisfaction than their colleagues from surgical units. Conclusions. Counter to the intuitively imposing image of the work of a nurse in various types of hospital wards, professional burden and mental condition, the need for mental health prevention of nursing staff applies primarily to staff employed in non-invasive treatment wards. With the aging of the population, it is becoming increasingly important to equip these nurses with the skills to cope with prolonged exposure to occupational stressors. (JNNN 2023;12(2):69–73)