Relationship between Sleep Quality and Job Stress in Health Care Staff

There are several factors involved in creating job stress. Shift work can be considered one of these factors which affect sleep quality among the staff. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of job stress on the sleep quality of the healthcare personnel.

This was a descriptive-analytical study conducted in 2011-2012. Data collection tools consisted of demographic information; HSE job stress questionnaires and Pittsburgh sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Descriptive statistics, Chi-square and Anova tests, Spearman correlation, and SPSS software version 26 were used for data analysis. The significance level of the test was 5%.

The mean score of sleep quality was 7.18 ± 3.5 and work stress was 98.7 ± 12.14. 61.8% of nurses did not have good sleep quality. The results of a one-way analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of work stress in work shifts (P = 0.019). The results of the Spearman correlation test showed a significant and inverse correlation between work stress and sleep quality (r = -0.17 p = 0.001).

The results of this study showed that the employees' sleep quality affects their job stress, reduces their productivity and causes some problems for them; therefore, managers must heed the results of this research and schedule the shifts in such a way as to reduce job stress. They can also hold training sessions and workshops to regulate sleep patterns and manage stress in due course of time.