Objective: This study aimed to assess the symptoms of psychopathology caused by the shift-work and to evaluate their impact on the quality of life. Method: Forty-two nurses working at daytime and 45 nurses working at the night shift were evaluated with Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) and Short Form 36 (SF-36) for assessing general psychiatric symptoms and quality of life. Results: Shift-work nurses reported significantly higher somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety, paranoid ideation and global severity index scores than daytime nurses. Significant differences were not found in the depression, hostility, phobic anxiety and psychoticism scores. Shift-work nurses also reported significantly worse scores on pain and physical function compared with daytime nurses. Conclusion: In our study, shift-work was shown to be a potential risk factor for increased psychiatric morbidity and low quality of life among nurses. Therefore, adjusting the work schedule with the potential problems of the workers may improve their life quality.
Key words: Anxiety, pain, quality of life, shift-work
|
