Evaluating General Health Status using Goldberg’s General Health Questionnaire among the Staff of Ilam University of Medical Sciences in 2015

Health and the factors affecting it are the most important and effective components in behavior, work performance and productivity of individuals working in different organizations. Universities of medical sciences play a fundamental and functional role in health promotion, transfer of its concepts to the community, and delivery of healthcare services. This study aimed to evaluate the general health status and its effective factors among the staff of Ilam University of Medical Sciences, Ilam, Iran.

This descriptive cross-sectional and analytical study was performed on 153 of staff working at two sectors of pardis and setad of Ilam University of Medical Sciences. The participants were selected using the random sampling method. General Health Questionnaire (G.H.Q-28), which contains 28 items measuring general health, was used for data collection. To analyze the data, ANOVA, Chi-square test, Spearman correlation, and independent t-test were run in SPSS, version 16.

Findings: The results showed that 50.3% of the studied population had health score of 0-22 (healthy group). Spearman correlation test showed a significant correlation between general health and marital status (P<0.05, r=0.164), but no significant difference was observed between the staff of the two sectors in terms of general health and its subscales (P>0.05). In addition, we did not observe a significant association between general health and variables such as age, gender, work experience, educational level, and type of employment (P>0.05).

In this study, work experience and employment type were introduced as the most effective factors on performance and general health. Additionally, the subscale of disruption in social performance was the most effective subscale on general health