Iran Journal of Nursing

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karimi M, Bozorgzad P, Najafi Ghezeljeh T, Haghani H, Fallah B. The Productivity and Quality of Work Life in Emergency Nurses. IJN 2021; 34 (130) :73-90
URL: http://ijn.iums.ac.ir/article-1-3415-en.html

Background & Aims: The emergency department is the heart of the hospital and the entry point for patients to receive health services and emergency nurses are one of the largest working groups in the hospital and the most influential force in determining the quality of services provided. The main mission of this department is to save the lives of patients. Therefore, emergency department nurses have big responsibility and it is necessary to have the necessary professional motivation and commitment along with sufficient knowledge and skills. In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on factors that can guarantee or impair the quality of emergency services, and all hospitals have tried to make the most of available resources to strengthen the factors with a positive impact on service quality. Productivity is a comprehensive concept that is closely related to effectiveness and efficiency. Several factors are involved in the organization productivity and the most important ones are human factors. On the other hand, a healthy and balanced work environment plays an important role in minimizing burnout and job stress and, consequently, improving the quality of services and productivity. Due to its importance, Human force productivity is considered as one of the indices of success or failure in any organization and its evaluation is one of the priorities of organization development. Therefore, one of the major challenges of health care systems is to provide quality services with a focus on increasing the quality of life of health care workers and increasing productivity. Therefore, information about the productivity and quality of work life of staff can be a basis for taking appropriate measures and preparing the ground for achieving the desired conditions. This study aimed to determine the productivity and quality of work life of emergency department nurses.
Materials & Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 189 nurses working in the emergency department of educational and medical centers affiliated to Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences during September-November 2016. The nurses were selected through stratified allocation method. Data were collected using a demographic questionnaire, nurses' productivity questionnaire (Dehghan Naieri et al., 2013) and quality of work life questionnaire (Brooks & Anderson, 2005). ANOVA and t-test were used to analyze the data in SPSS version 16.
Results: The mean productivity of nurses working in the emergency department was 92.55 ± 11.68. The average score of total quality of work life was 143.67 ± 26.98. The quality of work life had the highest average score in the dimension of work (3.58) and the lowest average score in the personal life dimension (3.04). The results showed no statistically significant relationship between any of the demographic characteristics and nurses' work productivity. Among the studied job characteristics, there was a statistically significant relationship between simultaneous employment and the productivity of emergency nurses (P<0.05). There was also a statistically significant relationship between nurses' quality of work life with marital status (P<0.01) and education (P<0.05). Working overtime (P<0.05) and choice of working hours (P<0.01) had a statistically significant relationship with the quality of work life of emergency nurses.
Conclusion: The findings of the present study showed that productivity and quality of work life in emergency nurses were at a moderate and relatively desirable level, respectively. This finding can help nursing planners to increase the productivity of nurses by investigating the causes of this problem and reducing it. For example, financial need in many cases leads the people to work in several environments, and planning to solve financial problems can reduce simultaneous employment and thus increase productivity. In particular, emergency nurses are responsible for vital activities, and sometimes the first error costs the patient's life. It was also found that mere academic promotion based on a degree could not be a reason to improve the quality of work life.  Awareness of nurses about these findings can improve these variables and increase their satisfaction and organizational productivity. Therefore, there is still a long way towards achieving the desired productivity and quality of life and require planning. Therefore, it is necessary to make comprehensive plans to improve the productivity and quality of work life of nurses. This planning can be done at the macro level by senior managers of the health system and at the micro level by the management of the hospital complex. It should be noted that due to the importance of the issue and the role of productivity and quality of work life in providing health care services and the emergency department which plays a vital role in hospitals, it is recommended that studies be conducted on larger sample size and more diverse research community. Also, the factors affecting the quality of life of single nurses and the reason for the decrease in their average quality of work life, and factors related to the decrease in productivity of nurses with a master's degree compared to nurses with a bachelor's degree should be examined in future research.