간호사의 근무경험 : 일반병동과 무의식병동을 중심으로 Focused on the General Wards and the Intensive Care Unit = A Study on Nurses' Job Experiences

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study was to review & compare the nurses' working experience for General Wards and Intensive Care Unit and thereby find effective nursing care to offer quality nursing services to the patients.
For this purpose, five nurses working for the General Wards of an university hospital in Seoul and five nurses working for the Intensive Care Unit of the same hospital were sampled and requested to write down their own experiences on duty for 4 consecutive days.
The collected data were analyzed using Giorgi's method.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows:
The nurses working for the General Ward experience various physical and mental problems such as busy work schedule, night duty, heavy work-load, frequent shifts between duties, inefficient division on works' low-quality work of coworkers, technical ill-preparedness, irregular working conditions. weekend or holiday duty, etc.
Therefore, these nurses worried much adout their health, while suffering mentally from work-stress, dissatisfaction, anxiety, tension, sense of inferiority, anger, depression, hard work, remorse, etc.
Moreover, in terms of human relations, they experience conflict or confrontation with their senior nurses and doctors. On the other hand, they hope that they would see their patients in some human atmosphere, and that their nursing service would be helpful to patients.
Thus, when patients' condition is poor, they feel a sense of incompetence, dullness, empathy, remorse, dispair, quit, etc.,while they learn how to persevere through patients' struggle for recovery. Meanwhile, they perceive that they are improperly treated by patients' patrons, unlike the doctors and that their services are not duely appreciated. But they maintain some human relationship with their collegues. Besides, they emphasize that it is necessary to control patrons' visit.
In the mean time, the nurses working for the Intensive Care Unit also experienced the various physical and mental problems such as busy work schedule, night duty, heary work-load, sudden demands for nursing services, frequent emergencies, repeated demands for nursing services, dialogueless working condition, demands for diagnostic services at times due to doctors' incompetence, night duties under heavy work-load, nursing services during patrons' visit, contact with patients' body, shortage of medical equipments, etc.
Therefore, these nurses suffer from physical fatigue, while suffering mentally from stress, dissatisfaction, emptiness, depression, conflicts, skepticism, fear, terror, anxiety, boredom, suffocation, stagnation, despair, etc.
In term of human relation, they feel conflict and skepticism due to seniors' disregard, and hurt their feelings due to seniors' insult. Moreover, they also feel inferior due to people's lack of understanding of their job.
These nurses also feel a sense of dispair, stagnation, conflict or other mental stress for patients' unimprovement, while feeling a sense of guilt and fear for the fixed thought of 'plant human being'.
In conclusion, the nurses working for Intensive Care Unit were skeptical about their nursing services, and feel a sense of fear or guilt for patients' desperate condition. But they do not lost hope or affection for their patients, while feeling necessary for a physical and psychological nursing. On the other hand, they feel an empathy with patients' condition, while attempting to surmount their stress.