Subjective mental workload in Spanish emergency nurses. A study on predictive factors.

INTRODUCTION: Mental workload refers to the cognitive or intellectual requirements that a worker is subjected to in a workday. The objective of the present work was to discover the subjective mental workload of nursing staff at Hospital Emergency Units, and its relationship with sociodemographic, work, environmental factors at the workplace, and personality variables. METHOD: A quantitative, descriptive, observational, and crosssectional study was conducted with 201 emergency nurses from 13 different provinces in Spain. Each participant completed 5 questionnaires (sociodemographic, work conditions, environmental conditions, personality, and subjective mental workload). Descriptive statistics were obtained, and Pearson's correlations and multivariate models (multiple linear regression) were performed. RESULTS: The nurses had medium to high levels of mental workload. The environmental conditions had a direct relationship with the mental workload, especially with respect to noise and lighting. The participants obtained high scores in kindness, responsibility, openness/intellect, and extraversion. Positive and statistically significant relations were found between neuroticism and mental workload. Being female, older, and having stable employment or a permanent contract were associated with a greater mental workload of emergency nurses. CONCLUSION: The domain of neuroticism personality, and the hygienic conditions in the workplace were the predictors with the most weight in the model. This study could be useful for defining aspects that need to be considered for the well-being of emergency nurses, such as lighting conditions or environmental noise in the workplace. It also invites reflection on the influence of personal factors (age, gender, personality) and work factors (type of contract, professional experience) on the mental workload of emergency nurses.

Doctors Who Integrate Spirituality and CAM in the Clinic: The Puerto Rican Case.

This article describes Puerto Rican physicians' personal and clinical utilization of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM), its effects, and use as they identified as either Spiritist, spiritual or religious. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 74 doctors in Puerto Rico. Major themes and relationships among them were charted using the qualitative data analysis program MAXQDA, open coding and grounded theory. Thirty-one doctors spoke of CAM and its use as related to their spiritual or religious perspectives. Spiritual or Spiritist doctors were more inclined than religious doctors to utilize CAM. Seeking closer relationships with patients was related to a spiritually oriented goal of healing (as distinct from curing) as a reason to recommend CAM.

Psychometric properties of the Spanish BASIS-24 mental health survey.

To assess mental health status among Latinos, culturally and linguistically appropriate instruments are needed. The purpose of this study was to assess psychometric properties and sensitivity of the Spanish revised Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale (BASIS-24), a self-report mental health assessment instrument first developed and validated in English. The Spanish translation was field tested among Spanish-speaking recipients of inpatient (N = 283) or outpatient (N = 311) mental health services in Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, and California. BASIS-24 was completed within 72 h of admission and up to 48 h before discharge (for inpatients) or at intake and 30-60 days later for outpatients. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated adequate fit for the model obtained from the English instrument. Internal consistency reliability exceeded 0.70 for five of the six factors. Concurrent and discriminant validity were partially supported. Improvement following treatment was statistically significant, with small to moderate effect sizes.