Stress, sleep woes take toll on nurses

Stress, sleep woes take toll on nurses

The quality of health among nurses is lower than that among women in other professions and poor working conditions are driving many to quit nursing, a study has found.

The study was released yesterday by the Nurses' Association of Thailand and researchers for the Thai Nurse Cohort Study (TNCs) project which looked into various aspects of the profession between 2009 and 2014.

Krisada Sawaengdee, who led the project and is the Nursing and Midwifery Council's vice-president, said the study rated Thai nurses' health quality at 0.75 out of a possible top score of 1.

Women working in other professions were rated 0.95.

One survey involving 18,765 nurses found more than half of them experience stress. One in three had problems sleeping while about 8-10% of them took sleeping pills.

Younger nurses' health quality rated lower than older ones, showing that younger nurses are more at risk of becoming stressed and burnt out.

Stress is caused by working long hours and many nurses have to work nights or work 12-hour shifts because of staff shortages.

It was also found that 39% of 1,305 nurses who died in 2014, succumbed to cancer, mainly breast and uterine cancer.

"Studies overseas have found that women working night shifts for more than 10 nights a month leads to a higher risk of breast cancer [than women working normal hours]."

The TNC study also found that 5.3% of nurses who experienced violence during shifts within a year prior to participating in the survey said they plan to quit nursing.

Violence included physical and verbal abuse by colleagues and patients.

Some 3,000-4,000 nurses retire each year, and the profession is now suffering from a shortage of trained nurses.

The study was presented at a nursing association meeting yesterday which sought to come up with solutions to make the profession better.

"A nursing shortage puts patients at risk," said Jintana Yunibhand, president of the Nurses' Association of Thailand.

"We'll develop solutions to propose to relevant government agencies to improve the work environment of nursing staff and attract more nurses," she said.

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