The relationship between mental workload and job performance among Iranian nurses providing care to COVID-19 patients: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Aims: To evaluate the relationship between mental workload and job performance among nurses providing care to patients with COVID-19, and to explain the factors predicting their performance. Background: The increased workload of health care workers in the COVID-19 pandemic affects their job performance, causes medical errors, contributes to patients’ mortality and is a major concern for all health care organisations in the world. Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited 139 nurses selected from the ICUs, infectious disease wards and emergency units of two hospitals in Iran. The NASA-Task Load Index and Paterson's job performance questionnaire were used. Results: Mean scores of mental workload and job performance of the nurses were 67.14 ± 30.53 and 37.37 ± 7.36, respectively. A total of 71.95% and 96.4% of the nurses had high mental workload and job performance levels, respectively. The results indicated a weak positive correlation between mental workload and the mean score of job performance(r =.057). Unlike the mental demand (r =.175, p =.04) and temporal demand (r =.307, p