Page 226 - GHES-3-1

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability
Fatigue, quality of life, and social support in Greek health staff

Table 12. Independent samples test for field of work
Levene’s test for t‑test for equality of means
equality of variance
F Sig. t df Sig. Mean Standard error 95% confidence interval of
(two‑tailed) difference difference the difference
Lower Upper
Fatigue
Equal variances assumed 4.116 0.044 2.457 157 0.015 0.20914 0.08512 0.04101 0.37728
Equal variances not assumed 2.389 121.853 0.018 0.20914 0.08755 0.03583 0.38246
Social support
Equal variances assumed 1.650 0.201 −1.612 157 0.109 −0.33346 0.20685 −0.74202 0.07510
Equal variances not assumed −1.555 117.947 0.123 −0.33346 0.21449 −0.75822 0.09129
GHQ-28 quality of life
Equal variances assumed 7.296 0.008 3.736 156 0.000 0.27227 0.07287 0.12832 0.41622
Equal variances not assumed 3.570 113.337 0.001 0.27227 0.07628 0.12116 0.42339
Abbreviations: df: Degrees of freedom; GHQ-28: General health questionnaire-28; Sig: Significance.

degree. Theofilou et al. (2022a) reported higher levels of social dysfunction, and severe depression; this result was
social support overall and for each individual sector among similar for fatigue. These findings imply that the larger the
nurses working in emergency departments, especially in support network of health professionals in artificial kidney
relation to the public sector of dialysis units in Greece; units, the lower the fatigue they experience, as well as the
in fact, their study focused solely on nurses in public various physical and psychological symptoms they may
hospitals. This finding demonstrates the variation in social encounter. Theofilou et al. (2022a) investigated the levels
support depending on the department in which the nurses of fatigue and social support, as well as the relationship
work. Fatigue levels were lower than expected in our study. between them, among the nursing staff in the emergency
Previous studies conducted on nurses in various units departments of hospitals in Athens and reported similar
reported high levels of fatigue (Arimon-Pages et al., 2019; findings. Overall, fatigue as well as mental fatigue was
Rotenstein et al., 2018). The same result applies to research negatively correlated with support from friends. A more
conducted in dialysis units (Wang et al., 2022). Similarly, detailed analysis regarding the impact of family and
the level of quality of life was higher than that reported friends as sources of social support revealed that both
in a previous study, where health professionals rated their subscales produced results similar to those of the total
quality of life as low (He et al., 2012). This finding also holds social support scale. These findings were applicable to
true in Greece, especially after the pandemic (Vamvakas both the private and public sectors. A notable difference
et al., 2022). Theofilou et al. (2022) reported similar results, was that in the public sector, fatigue showed a significant
with all four factors of quality of life scoring almost twice correlation with social support, whereas such a correlation
as high, indicating a worse quality of life. Evidently, both was absent in the private sector. This was true for the social
surveys Vamvakas et al. (2022) and Theofilou et al. (2022) support questionnaire as a whole as well as for the family
were conducted in 2021, when the health system was still and friends subscales separately.
grappling with the pandemic, which clearly affected the The results described above are also supported by other
mental health of healthcare professionals. studies. For instance, Theofilou et al. (2022) conducted a
When comparing the public and private sectors, the survey of 165 health professionals working in hospitals
private sector showed greater levels of fatigue, lower levels in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace. Their analyses
of social support (both overall and in relation to family revealed a positive correlation between health quality,
and friends), and higher scores in relation to physical as measured using the same instrument (GHQ-28), and
symptoms, anxiety/insomnia, social dysfunction, and fatigue (FAS), but a negative correlation, particularly
severe depression. Regarding the correlations between the of mental fatigue, with social support. Therefore, these
scales used, several significant correlations were found. findings are generally corroborated by the literature.
First, the social support scale demonstrated a negative The independent samples t-test demonstrated that the
correlation with physical symptoms, anxiety/insomnia, public sector exhibited higher levels of fatigue and lower

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 218 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.4574