Quality of life among women working in health care services in Tabuk city, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Objective: Working in health care centres is associated with a high level of stress that increases the risk of low quality of life (QoL). This study was conducted among women working in health care services to explore their QoL and its association with socio-demographic and work-related factors. Methods: A web-based, questionnaire was delivered to women working at the ministry of health facilities in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire consisted of two sections. The first section inquired about the socio-demographic data of the respondents and the second section consisted of the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) assessment instrument. Results: The response rate was 50.5%. Nurses accounted for 48.5% of the respondents, while doctors and technicians represented 26.7% and 20.8%, respectively. The social relations domain showed the lowest mean score. Multivariate analysis showed that increasing the number of children was significantly associated with lower scores in all QoL domains. Having night shifts or on-calls negatively impacted the physical, psychological and environmental domains. Working for 12 hours negatively impacted the psychological, social relations and environmental domains. Being single and having a higher salary positively impacted the environmental domain. Conclusions: Several factors seem to affect the QoL of female healthcare workers. Some of the work-related factors can be modified to alleviate stress and improve the QoL, such as reducing the working hours and frequency of night shifts and improving the salary.