Psychiatric nurses are under more stress than general nurses, requiring physical and mental health. Therefore, when psychiatric nurses' quality of life and their wellness are high, they will provide superior-quality nursing in a better state of sati...
Psychiatric nurses are under more stress than general nurses, requiring physical and mental health. Therefore, when psychiatric nurses' quality of life and their wellness are high, they will provide superior-quality nursing in a better state of satisfaction, which will lead to having positive influence on their professional performances of nursing in maintaining and providing the optimal well-being conditions for psychiatric clients. Accordingly, the study was carried out to investigate how high psychiatric nurses' quality of life and their wellness are and what relations there are between the two aspects.
As the objects for the study, the three psychiatry-specialized hospital organizations located in Gyung-gi Province and 237 psychiatric nurses were selected who participated in the academic conference, and the period of investigation was from Oct. 14, 2008 to Nov. 11, 2008. As for the tools for the study, 󰡐Quality of Life Scale󰡑 developed by Yu-ja Roh(1988) was used as the measure tool for their quality of life while the measure tool for their wellness was 󰡐Korean Wellness Life Style Scale󰡑which was originally devised by Anspaugh D.A. et al(1994) and afterwards developed by Sang-guk Kim(2001) fit for Koreans. The collected data was analyzed by using different processes such as SPSS 14.0, Real Number and Percentage, ANOVA, t-test, multiple comparison-based Scheffe test, Person Correlation Coefficient.
The results of the study are as follows:
1. The number of objects for the study was 237 in total. The majority of the objects was female, in their twenties and thirties, singles, college graduates, working at the field of clinic and full time regular jobs, and their monthly income is less then 2 million won and they lived with their family.
The nurses were mostly healthy in terms of subjective health they perceived, which showed most of them conceived they were normally or quite healthy. There were 111 people who had the certificate of a psychiatric health nurse, out of whom the first ranked people were 41 people while the second ranked people were 67 people.
2. It was found that there was a significant difference in the psychiatric nurses' quality of life depending on their place of their work(p<.05), age, marital state, education career, whether or not they had health-related certificates, kinds of qualifications, monthly income, dwelling pattern and subjective health(p<.01). On the contrary, it was found that there was no significant difference in their quality of life about the employment patterns.
In other words, as their age was older, their school career higher, their income more and married ones rather than single ones and those engaged in the field of clinic rather than those in the local community, the quality of psychiatric nurses' life was higher. Especially, it was found that those who had the first ranked certificated of a psychiatric health nurse, lived with their family together or perceived their subjective health was superior.
3. As for the wellness of the psychiatric nurses, there was a significant difference depending on their marital state, education career, monthly income and subjective health(p<.01) while there was no significant difference depending on their age, place of their work, whether or not they had health-related certificates, employment pattern and dwelling pattern.
In other words, it was found that as their education career was higher, monthly income more and married ones rather than single ones and when they lived with their family, the psychiatric nurses' wellness was higher.
4. It was found that there was a significantly positive correlation between the psychiatric nurses' quality of life and their wellness(p<.05) while there was a positive correlation between each domain of the wellness and the quality of life(p<.05).
In the synthesis of all the results mentioned above, the related factors to control the increase of the psychiatric nurses' quality of life and their wellness were found to be their education careers, whether or not they had health-related certificates and their monthly incomes. Consequently, when an educational consideration to increase their quality of life and wellness is established with administrational supports to differentiate psychiatric nurses, it is possible to provide them with high-quality services.