The emotional well-being of palliative care nurses working in a referral hospital in Johannesburg.
Date
2011-11-04
Authors
Mokgotla, Katleho Ntshediseng
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Abstract
Nurses are the largest group of healthcare providers in South Africa. The personal cost of
caring is an important concern for nurses as they have one-on-one contact with terminally-ill
patients. This contact could affect their psychological and emotional well-being. There are
few studies on the psychological and emotional well-being of nurses working in palliative
care in South Africa. The aim of this study was to investigate the emotional well-being of
nurses providing palliative care in Johannesburg. The study compared the emotional wellbeing
of nurses working in palliative care and nurses providing general health care. This
was achieved by focusing primarily on levels of secondary traumatic stress, empathy,
emotional exhaustion, affective commitment, continuance commitment, and sense of
coherence. Data were gathered from a sample consisting of 67 nurses; 32 nurses offering
palliative care and 35 nurses offering general care. The instruments used to assess
emotional well-being were: Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale, Interpersonal Reactivity
Index, Maslach Burnout Inventory (Emotional exhaustion subscale), Affective commitment
scale, Continuance commitment scale, and Orientation to Life Questionnaire. Data were
analysed using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test. The results showed that there were
no significant differences in levels of secondary traumatic stress, empathy, emotional
exhaustion, continuance commitment, and sense of coherence between palliative care and
general care nurses. However, there was a significant difference in levels of affective
commitment between the two groups of nurses. Additional analyses were run to establish
whether there was a relationship between organisational commitment and age. Pearson
Product Moment Correlation was used to determine the relationship between two variables,
age and affective commitment, and age and continuance commitment. The results showed
that there was no relationship between age and affective commitment. However, the
correlational analysis showed that there was a significant relationship between age and
continuance commitment. The findings of this study suggest the need for management of
health organisations to invest in the well-being of their nurses. Directions for future research
among nurses could focus on improving the psychological and emotional well-being of
nurses in South African hospitals.