Perception of Fatigue in Female Nurses Employed in Hospitals

Abstract

Background: Fatigue is the inability to maintain the required stamina in work capacity with
consequences affecting occupational performance, health, and safety. Women are often more
exposed to the risk of fatigue because they tend to be multitaskers. The present survey is aimed
at determining the perceived fatigue in female nurses employed in hospitals and identifying the
individual and occupational factors affecting it.
Methods: This survey was conducted on 270 female nurses. The sample was selected using
multistage randomized stratified multistage sampling. To collect the data, a demographic and
occupational information, and Iowa Fatigue Scale (IFS) were filled using the self-report technique. The gleaned data were analyzed with SPSS16 using analysis of variance (ANOVA),
T-test and, and Pearson correlation coefficient.
Results: The overall score of nurses fatigue was 30.78±7.90. There was a statistically significant difference between employment status (p=0.01), husband’s support (p=0.00), age
(p=0.008), and work experience (p=0.02) on one hand, and fatigue. There was no significant
difference between marital status (p=0.23), type of ward (p=0.59), official position (p=0.51),
work shift (p=0.29), having a suckling (p=0.10), having a second job (0.25), and monthly work
hours (p=0.38) and fatigue.
Conclusion: Based on the findings of this survey, a moderate degree of fatigue was observed
among female nurses employed in clinical wards. Also, factors such as age, being married,
employment status, and husband’s support have considerable impact on the perceived fatigue.
This demands the application of preventive interventions to decrease fatigue in female nurses
specifically for older married nurses with permanent employment.