Study on the feeling of fatigue for woman workers of social welfare

Abstract

Feelings of fatigue in female workers of welfare service facilities were investigated with reference to their workload patterns. Eleven physical and occupational therapists and 20 assistants of a hospital (R), 47 nurses of another hospital (S) and 27 assistants of a home for the aged (Z) were studied. One of the major complaints of female workers engaged in such welfare facilities was pain in the lower back. The nurses of hospital S worked three shifts consisting of day duty (9:00-17:00), semi-night duty (17:00-1:00) and night duty (1:00-9:00), and fatigue feelings after the day duty and the night duty definitely showed a high frequency for the first component of drowsy-dull symptoms followed by the third component of physical disintegration (I-dominant type). Semi-night duty was characterized by a high frequency for the second component of difficulty in concentration, the mean frequency of which was next to the first component and exceeded that of the third component (II-dominant type). After daily work the physical and occupational therapists of hospital R showed the II-dominant type, while the assistants of the hospital R and the home Z showed the I-dominant type. In concentration with local sites of fatigue, workers of the hospital R frequently complained of fatigue and pain in the neck, shoulders, low back and feet, whereas nurses of hospital S complained mostly of fatigue and pain in the low back and lower legs and workers of the home for the aged had frequent complaints in the shoulders, low back, legs and feet. The observed high frequencies of general and mental fatigue as well as those of local fatigue complaints of these workers were suggested to be related to chronic fatigue developing in the back and limb muscles due mainly to their typical therapeutic and 'helping' activities at work.