Alice Khachian, Jale Mohammad Aliha, Hamid Haghani, Mahnaz Sarabi

Abstract

Introduction: Musculoskeletal problems is one of the most important issues resulted by undesirable body form in time of working. Describing the effect of different levels of musculoskeletal problems on the quality of working life is important for selection of preventive strategy. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between musculoskeletal problems and Quality of Working Life (QWL) of nurses in critical care units. Methodology: In this descriptive - correlative study, 384 nurses selected amongst from the critical care unit of selected hospitals in Tehran based on multistage sampling. Data were collected using a three part questionnaire including demographic information, QWL researcher-made questionnaire and Nordic musculoskeletal problems questionnaire; then, it was analyzed using SPSS v.22 software and descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings: The results showed that highest incidence of musculoskeletal problems in the subjects are related to low back and knee with 61.2% and 59.1% respectively. It was found that 68.7% of the considered nurses had average quality of working life. Also in this study, investigation of the relationship between musculoskeletal problems and the mean of QWL showed that there is statistically significant meaningful relationship between the musculoskeletal problems and quality of working life for nurses (p value <0.001). Generally, people who had no musculoskeletal problems had higher quality of working life and the people who had musculoskeletal problems had lower quality of working life and the more musculoskeletal problems there were, the less the score of QWL life was. Results: Based on the findings of this research, physical conditions and musculoskeletal problems can affect the quality of working life of critical care nurses and therefore, the optimization of this condition is significantly effective on improvement of the quality of working life conditions.