Trastornos mentales y calidad de vida relacionada con la salud en profesionales de Unidades de Cuidados Intensivos

Abstract

Health professionals working in Intensive Care Units face situations of human suffering, competitiveness, demands for skills and job insecurity, which may have negative consequences on their quality of life and mental health. This scenario could trigger common mental disorders and impaired health-related quality of life in Intensive Care Unit workers. This study aimed to describe common mental disorders and health-related quality of life in Intensive Care Unit professionals in Salvador, Brazil. A descriptive, cross-sectional study was performed, with 195 health professionals working in the Intensive Care Unit of a high complexity hospital in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The professionals had to be working for three or more months in the units or removed from the service when they were detected with common mental diseases or other pathology. A socio-demographic and occupational data questionnaire, and the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20), was applied to identify common mental disorders, and the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36v2) was used to assess health-related quality of life. The socio-demographic and occupational data questionnaire included age, sex, race, educational status, marital status, profession, number of working hours, the number of jobs, monthly income, and chronical diseases. Data was collected between March and July of 2019 in four Intensive Care Units, using Brazilian Portuguese translated versions of the instruments. The groups of professionals with and without common mental disorders were compared according to socio-demographic and occupational data and health-related quality of life using the U Mann-Whitney test, with p-values under.05. Composite reliability evaluated the internal consistency of the instruments, assuming values above.70 as satisfactory. Bivariate analysis with the Spearman correlation test between the SRQ-20 and the SF-36v2 considered strong correlation values equal to or greater than.50 and a p-value of less than.05. The sample was composed of 137 (70.3 %) women and 148 (72.3 %) professionals who had more than 40 hours per week working in the Intensive Care Unit. Common mental disorders were detected in 58 (29.7 %) health professionals, with a higher prevalence ratio in Nursing professionals (PR = 2.28; CI 1.19-4.39; p =.007). The SRQ-20 and the SF-36v2 domains showed satisfactory internal consistency, with values of composite reliability above.70. The normalized scores of health-related quality of life showed low average values in all domains, especially in Social Function (44.25 ± 10.15) and Emotional Role (45.86 ± 10.58). The SRQ-20 showed strong and significant correlations with Bodily Pain (r = -.502), General Health (r = -.526), Vitality (r = -.656), Social Function (r = -.608), Mental Health (r = -.631) and Mental Component Summary (r = -.638) of the SF-36v2 (p