Investigating The Performance Obstacles of Intensive Care Units from The Perspective of Nurses and Its Relationship with Quality of Work Life

Nurses in intensive care units face various performance obstacles in the work setting that can increase their workload and affect their quality of work life. The aim of this study was to investigate the performance obstacles of intensive care units from the perspective of nurses and its relationship with quality of work life.

This cross-sectional study was a descriptive correlational study that was conducted in 2020. The number of 150 nurses working in the intensive care unit of hospitals affiliated to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences were selected by stratified random sampling method. Data collection tools in this study were demographic information questionnaire, performance obstacles and quality of work life questionnaire. Data were collected and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics by SPSS16 software.

The most performance obstacle from the nurseschr('39') point of view, in the field of environmental barriers related to “dysfunction due to excessive presence of the patientchr('39')s family” (66.7%), in the field of barriers related to organization related to “Insufficient information about the patient/patients from the doctor” (71.3%), In the field of barriers related to technology and equipment related to “Improper equipment of beds or non-insulated rooms assigned to the nurse” (44.7%) and in the field of barriers related to nurse duties related to “answering excessive calls from the patientchr('39')s family” (72%) . The average total score of quality of work life was 84.4±21.8 which was the lowest quality related to the dimensions of fair and working pay and the highest quality was related to the development of human capabilities. There is a significant inverse relationship between the overall score of quality of work life and Performance obstacles (p<0.05).

The results indicate the low quality of work life of nurses and nurses face numerous performance obstacles in the field of environment, organization, equipment, and nursing duties. With increasing performance obstacles, the quality of work life of nurses decreases. Nursing service managers can try to remove barriers and improve the quality of work life of nurses by creating a suitable organizational environment and practical policies, passing executive laws and regulations.