Social tolerance of working time scheduling in nursing

Abstract

Six criteria of social tolerance for working time scheduling are introduced. They are based on the perspective of the persons concerned and cover six aspects: Job security and access to labour markets, income, health, relationships in life partnerships, participation in social life and degree of autonomy for working time scheduling. The relative importance of these criteria and the intervening role of autonomy in working time scheduling and of gender on the impact of different working time schedules (regular daytime, shiftwork, permanent nightwork) on stress, burnout and well-being were investigated in a study with 297 nurses from a German general hospital. Standardized scales with internal consistencies of between .66 and .95 were used to measure autonomy for working time scheduling as well as 12 facets of stress, burnout and well-being. Analyses were performed by descriptive statistics, t-tests and multivariate analyses of covariance. Results show: 1) the dominance of health related and social aspects in the social tolerance of working time scheduling; 2) large differences in stress, burnout and well-being for nurses on different working time schedules (regular daytime, shiftwork, permanent nightwork); 3) strong covariate effects of autonomy on working time scheduling as well as strong covariate effects of gender on the influence that different working time schedules exert on stress, burnout and well-being. Finally, some methodological problems connected with studying the criteria for social tolerance of working time scheduling are discussed.

Key Words:

• Working time scheduling
• Autonomy
• Gender
• Stress
• Burnout
• Health care