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.
Keywords: Healthcare workers, Quality of life, WHOQOL-BREF, Saudi
Arabia
