A. Gigantesco, F. Mirabella, G. Bonaviri, P. Morosini - Vol. 10, September 2004, Issue 3
Testo Bibliografia Summary Indice
Il benessere psicologico in popolazioni
del settore sanitario
Psychological well-being in health professionals
Objective
Validation and first use of a self-completed questionnaire to assess psychological
well-being in health professionals.
Methods
The questionnaire consists of 28 items. It has been developed through
review of the literature and focus group. A reliability test-retest study
was performed on 45 health professionals with different roles. Factorial validity
and internal consistency of each derived subscale were evaluated on a wide
sample of 514 professionals. In addition, professionals’ well-being was evaluated
and possible relationships were tested between total score and the following
variables: age, sex, professional role and years of employment.
Results
Weighted kappa was higher than 0.60 for 79% of the items, than 0.70 for
62% and than 0.80 for 17%. Factor analysis revealed that four factors – Feeling
of well being, Usefulness and efficiency, Social relationships, Social support
– explained 46% of total variance. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the subscales
ranges from 0.45 to 0.89.
Fairly good well-being has been found among the general hospital staff with
the exception for help received for problems related to coping with criticism.
In general, females and nurses had less well-being.
Discussion
The questionnaire is reliable and has a coherent factor structure, with
four factors or subscales that have good internal consistency. This questionnaire
may be useful to assess well being in health staff. Despite the fact that
the questionnaire was specifically developed for a health staff population,
it could be used also in other professional fields and in the general population.