Assessment of the quality of life of prehospital care nursing professionals.

BACKGROUND

Nursing professionals play an active role in Mobile Urgent Care Services (Serviço de Atendimento Móvel de Urgência-SAMU). Together with other staff members they are responsible for providing high-quality care to patients. However, they are exposed to extreme pressure and emotional overload, which might impair their biopsychological balance and quality of life.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the quality of life of prehospital care nursing professionals.

METHOD

Cross-sectional descriptive study with quantitative approach conducted from April through June 2017 at a SAMU in the northwestern area of the state of Ceara, Brazil. The target population was SAMU nursing professionals, namely, 8 nurses and 11 nursing technicians. Data collection was performed by means of an instrument which contained two quality of life assessment scales, the Flanagan scale and World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-bref).

RESULTS

The domains with the poorest scores on the Flanagan scale were physical and material well-being and social activities. On WHOQOL-bref, the domains with the lowest mean scores were physical health, environment and self-assessed quality of life.

CONCLUSION

The SAMU nursing professionals were predominantly female and married, their average age was 37 years old, had attended undergraduate education at least, and worked 71.88 (±17.50) hours per week. The results point to the need to implement actions to improve the quality of life of this population of workers.