Investigation of health problems of nurses who work daytime and shiftwork in Duzce University Hospital

Nursing is a profession that requires self-devotion, patience and physical endurance. Nurses have to keep their physical and mental healths in order to be more helpful to the patients. This research was cross-sectional performed so as to determine nurses' in Duzce University Medical School life habits, health problems and the factors affecting this. Questionnaire and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) were applied to 154 nurses accepting the research in research hospital in 2013. There are 24% continually daytime, mounting guards, 76% working at nights according to manner of work. Smokers are 41% and half of the nurses (53.7%) who smoke say that the use of smoking increases during guard. 75.3% of the nurses do not do exercises, 61.7% of them eat by skipping meal, 74% of them sleep irregularly and 50.6% of them have difficulty in falling sleep. It reveals that 20.1% of them have chronic disease and 83.9% of them say that it affects the productivity of work. Also, it was determined a significant relationship between manner of work and age, gender, having child, diet, physical activity, and regular sleep. Mental symptoms having the highest point averages in 9 subscales and additional articles in BSI are respectively: obsessive compulsive disorder (1.03 ± 0.69), paranoid ideation (1.01 ± 0.79) and hostility (0.87 ± 0.71), these points were found close to medium level. The mental symptom having the lowest point of average is phobic anxiety (0.30 ± 0.40). Disorder seriousness index (0.13 ± 0.10) and symptom disorder index (0.29 ± 0.09) point averages are low and sign total index (23.05 ± 11.96) is at midlevel. The most common health problems in the research are tiredness (97.4%), leg pain (85.7%), backache (79.9%), back pain (74.7%), headache (72.1%), varicose (59.1%), neck ache (55.2%). Significant relationships are founded between only leg pain and varicose from health problems and the manner of work. Occupational Health and Safety Unit must be founded so as to reduce health problems. Service trainings about occupational risks must be given to the nurses.