English

Abstract

BACKGROUND Nurses and medical social workers’ (MSW’s) stress has an impact on health, which ultimately has an effect on quality care of the patients. Stress problems are one of the leading causes of sleep disturbance. We wanted to evaluate the association of quality and pattern of sleep with work stress levels in nurses and medico-social workers in this study. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted on nurses and MSW’s of Tertiary Care Hospitals of Wardha city using questionnaire, containing 24 questions. A total of 513 Nurses and 36 MSW’s of Tertiary Care Hospitals were taken in this study, sampling was done by simple random sampling method. The stress was evaluated using 10 items “Global perceived stress scale” (GPSS) and for sleep quality “Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index” (PSQI) of total 14 items was used. The variables were compared in unpaired t test and Pearson correlation test to know the level of significance of determinacy which was set at less than 0.05. RESULTS The overall PSS scores in nurses (12.57 ± 3.7) and MSWs (12.87 ± 3.1) were almost similar and were statistically significant. Subjective sleep quality score of MSWs (2.19 ± 0.66) was higher than that of nurses (2.00 ± 0.19) and was statistically insignificant according to the specialization. The statistically relevant sleep duration was greater in MSWs (13.50 ± 03.56) than in nurses (12.16 ± 02.73). Moderate positive correlation between perceived stress severity and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was observed. CONCLUSIONS Certain characteristics of work shift among nurses and MSW’s is directly affected by the stress and sleep quality and indirectly affects the patient care and treatment. The study indicates that work characteristics may influence sleep quality and stress among nurses and MSW’s. We needed to improve work shift schedule in order to provide good health and well-being of nurses and MSW’s which would further improve the quality of patient care. KEY WORDS Nurses, MSW’s, Sleep Quality, Stress