Prevalence and Impact on Job Performance of Primary Headache Among Medical and Paramedical Staff in the Emergency Department

Abstract

Background: The headache is one of the most common neurological disorders and ranks the third cause of years lost due to disability. So this study was conducted to identify the prevalence of headache and its impact on job performance in emergency department medical and paramedical staff. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study using self-administered questionnaire. A total of 308 medical and paramedical staff were selected randomly from emergency departments of Taif hospitals during the period from December 2016 to January 2017. Results: Three hundred eight staff participated in the study. One hundred fifty-eight (158, 51.3%) were males and 150 (48.7%) were females. One hundred thirty-two (132, 42.9%) were medical staff and 176 (57.1%) were paramedical staff. The last 3 months prevalence of headache among participants was 272 (88.3%) with statistical significant differences with physical activities (P = 0.008) and smoking (P = 0.020). Regarding the impact of headache, 86 (31.6%) had little to no impact and others had severe impact (74, 27.2%), remarkable impact (40, 14.7%) and some impact (72, 26.5%). There were statistical significant differences (P ≤ 0.05) between headache impact test and age, marital status, specialty, BMI, physical activities, smoking, headache duration, specialist consultation, medication use and frequency of absenteeism. Conclusion: The primary headache prevalence is very high among medical and paramedical staff in emergency departments. Its characteristics are almost meeting the diagnostic criteria of the tension-type headache. The impact of headache on job performance is little in most of the staff, but there is significant percent of those with severe impact. J Neurol Res. 2017;7(1-2):5-12 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jnr420e