Insomnia and burnout in Greek Nurses.

BACKGROUND/AIM: Sleep disturbances and burnout are possibly related to each other, although the exact nature of this relationship is still under investigation.  The purpose of the study was to investigate the prevalence of insomnia and its relation with burnout levels in a group of nurses working in psychiatric, pediatric, internal medicine and surgery departments in the public hospitals of central Greece. METHODS: One hundred and seventy four nurses working in internal medicine, surgery, psychiatric and pediatric sector in public hospitals of Central Greece were enrolled in the study. Maslach's burnout inventory and Athens Insomnia Scale were used to evaluate burnout and insomnia respectively. Statistical significance was set at p=0.05. RESULTS: Mean age of the nurses was 35.19 ± 7.07 (22-56). One hundred and fifteen (95.8%) nurses were women and 71 nurses (59.2%) were married. Mean insomnia score was 10.00. Approximately 3 out of 4 nurses exhibited high burnout levels.  Nurses working in the department of surgery and those with more than 4.5 night shifts per month exhibited higher insomnia scores. Insomnia score was correlated with burnout subscales, positively with emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and negatively with personal achievements scale. CONCLUSIONS: Insomnia and burnout scales are linearly related to each other. Younger nurses are particular vulnerable to insomnia. Job reform should target at younger nurses and those working on surgical departments who might also benefit from additional education and training to reduce insomnia and burnout. Hippokratia 2014; 18 (2):150-155.

What kind of care and support do infertile women undergoing fertility treatment in Greece expect? A questionnaire survey.

The aim of this study was to identify infertile women's expectations and perceived importance of professional psychosocial services and to identify the predictors of their expectations. The study included 404 infertile women. Most women sought more medical information and more emotional support than what was offered, mainly by the hospital staff. Less than half the women rated psychosocial services as important. The main predictors of the importance of ratings were high fertility-related stress, low provision of social support, low social class and male infertility factor. A provision for information regarding the medical and psychosocial aspects of infertility should be included in routine care in fertility clinics. Although it seems possible to meet the emotional and psychosocial needs of less distressed women through information and support, it is necessary to offer professional psychosocial services to more distressed women.

Family planning and psychosocial support for infertile couples.

AIMS: The study was set up to analyze the psychological/emotional needs of women who undergo treatment for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and to emphasize the importance of the psychosocial support that family planning centers can provide to them. METHOD: This was a cohort study with closed questions. A total of 235 infertile women participating in an IVF program were studied. The statistical analysis of the findings was conducted by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. RESULTS: The psychosocial support and the scientific information provided to those women who participate in IVF programs are insufficient. In order to succeed in an IVF program, the women must be assisted by a doctor with much medical experience. The study shows that 59.3% of the women studied sought more medical information and another 32.5% sought emotional support. These percentages varied with reference to education, age and origin. These kinds of services must be provided by family planning centers.

Cervical intraepithelial dysplasia (CIN 3) and history of herpes genitalis (HSV2) in women living in Attica, Greece.

This article presents a study on women living in Attica, Greece (an area of 4.5 million inhabitants) who visited the outpatient clinics of two specialized hospitals for a follow-up for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 3). A random sample of 170 women with CIN 3 and a control group of 195 women coming from the general population were interviewed. A semi-structured designed questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. The aim of the study was to search for a possible correlation between CIN 3 and a past history of herpes genitalis (HSV2) of the women and/or their partners. According to the results, CIN 3 is more frequent among women between 26 and 40 years of age. The majority of the patients (70.3%) reported a past history of HSV2, but only 10.9% of the subjects in the control group had the same medical history (p = 0.000). Sixteen percent of the patients and only 5.3% of the subjects in the control group reported infection of their sexual partners with HSV2. 75 patients (44.6%) stated that they did not know if their sexual partners had a past history of HSV2, while only 27 women (13.3%) in the control group reported the same (p = 0.000). Patients reported more sexual partners than women in the control group.

Coffee intake and other factors in relation to multiple deliveries: a study in Greece.

We conducted a case-control study of factors that may be related to the prevalence of multiple births with at least one liveborn. Over a period of 15 months during 1991-1992 in Athens, Greece, we identified 380 women who had a multiple birth that was delivered in one of the six larger maternity hospitals in the area. We selected as controls 380 livebirth singleton pregnancies delivered at the same hospitals immediately following a multiple pregnancy. All mothers were interviewed in the maternity wards or at home, and zygosity was ascertained through the similarity method. The odds ratio for ovulation-inducing drugs was not elevated for monozygotic twins, but it was 9-fold for dizygotic twins and 90-fold for triplets or quadruplets. We excluded drug-induced pregnancies, twins of indeterminable zygosity, and all triplets from further analyses. We found no remarkable association between any of the study variables and the occurrence of monozygotic twins, with the exception of an increasing trend with age. For dizygotic twins, we found weak associations in the expected directions with maternal age (positive) and height (positive) as well as with parity and number of induced abortions (positive). A history of oral contraceptive use was inversely, but weakly, associated with dizygotic twinning. Each cup of coffee per day was associated with an increment in the odds ratio of 1.23-fold. (95% confidence interval = 1.05-1.43). Restriction of the analysis to dizygotic twins of different gender increased the point estimate of the odds ratio to 1.31 for each cup of coffee consumed daily.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)