Fatigue, quality of life, and social support in Greek health staff: Public versus private kidney units

Abstract

Healthcare professionals often experience fatigue and a diminished quality of life due to demanding hours and challenges in balancing work and personal life. Social support plays a critical role in influencing these factors. This study focused on nurses and healthcare workers in the artificial kidney unit, a specialized area requiring significant expertise to operate complex machinery for seriously ill patients. We assessed levels of fatigue, social support, and quality of life among 159 doctors and nurses in public and private facilities across Greece using the Fatigue Assessment Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and General Health Questionnaire-28. Participants reported moderate fatigue (mean = 2.63, standard deviation [SD] = 0.57 for doctors; mean = 2.42, SD = 0.49 for nurses) and moderate-to-high levels of social support (mean = 5.66, SD = 1.35). Factors negatively impacting quality of life, such as physical symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, and severe depression, yielded low scores. Notably, fatigue and quality of life differed significantly between public and private sectors (p < 0.05), with public sector professionals reporting higher fatigue levels and lower quality of life. These findings highlight the need for healthcare authorities to address the unique challenges faced by staff in artificial kidney units, particularly in public hospitals, to improve working conditions and overall well-being.

Keywords

Fatigue / Social support / Quality of life / Artificial kidney unit / Dialysis unit

Acknowledgments

None.

Funding

None.

Conflict of interest

Paraskevi Theofilou is an Editorial Board Member and Guest Editor of this journal, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, other authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: Gesthimani Chatzimanolaki, Paraskevi Theofilou

Formal analysis: Gesthimani Chatzimanolaki, Paraskevi Theofilou

Investigation: Gesthimani Chatzimanolaki, Paraskevi Theofilou

Methodology: Gesthimani Chatzimanolaki, Paraskevi Theofilou

Writing - original draft: All authors

Writing - review & editing: All authors

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was approved by the scientific committees of participating hospitals (numbers of approval 9177/19.4.2024, 165/27.3.2024-28.3.2024). Written consent was given by the subjects before their participation in this study.

Consent for publication

Written consent was given by the subjects for publishing their data.

Availability of data

Data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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