Quality of Work Life among Female Nurses in the Kottakkal Region, Kerala

Abstract

Quality of work life is a critical concept having lots of importance in employee’s life. It is defined as the extent to which an employee is satisfied with his personal and working needs while achieving the goals of the organization. It is a psychosocial factor affecting the health of the employee and a basic determinant for the efficiency of working life. It is known to be a significant factor for nurses, having direct and indirect effects for giving highly qualified patient care during health services. The work of nurses is considered as extremely stressful. It is an environment over which they have no control whatsoever and is an atmosphere that wrecks their schedules, disrupts their home life, makes social activities and regular breaks very hard to plan and supplies constant hassle. A descriptive research design, namely a cross-sectional study was used in the study with an aim to determine the level of working life quality of nurses. A convenience sample of two hundred and fifty female nurses was recruited from hospitals in Kottakkal area, Kerala India. Data were collected with the help of a questionnaire prepared in accordance to working life characteristics and socio-demographic variables. The main findings were that factors such as interactions with friendly, supportive work colleagues made the greatest contribution to the participants’ quality of working life, but they felt a sense of injustice about being underpaid and undervalued in relation to their demanding work responsibilities. Some suggestions are also being made to improve the QWL of nurses, thus, ultimately leading to better health services.