Investigation of the Relationship between General health and Sleep Disorders among Nurses Working in Zanjan’s Hospitals (Iran)

ABSTRACT: Sleeping is one the most important cycles of day and night and a complicated biological pattern which has profound impacts on physical and mental health.Nurses and Physicians involve in occupations which requires them to have shifts and therefore, this results in sleep disorders; particularly nursing which is intertwined with working on shifts and gives rise to sleeping disorders, and jeopardizes the nurses’ physical and mental health. Therefore, the present study aims at investigating the relationship between mental health and sleeping disorders among nurses working in fixed and flexible shifts at hospitals of Zanjan,Iran in year 2011. This research was a descriptive-correlative study.385 nurses working in different shifts at hospitals of Zanjan were selected using stratified Random sampling method.Demographic Information Form was used to collect the data and GHQ-28 and Sleep disorder questionnaire (SDQ) were used to investigate general health. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software and descriptive and inferential statistics(T-test,correlation coefficient and ANOVA).The findings of this study showed that from the subjects observed 59 were men (15.3%) and 326 were women (84.7%). The age group of 25-34 had the largest number and (74%) were married. 55 people were in fixed shifts and 330 subjects were in circulating shifts. The mean and standard deviation for fixed shift and circulating shifts were 10.18±3.81 and 11.2±5.57, respectively.The mental health state and sleeping disorder of the nurses working in fixed shifts are the same as those of the nurses working in circulating shifts.The results of mono-lateral variance analysis and regression correlation coefficient revealed an indirect relation between sleeping disorder and general health as sleeping disorder decreases the general health level among the nurses. According to the results and since nurses’ psychological health is directly related to their performance at the hospital taking care of patients,congruent,preventive and treating programs for this important community seems necessary.