Exploring social health and work conscience among nurses working in hospitals of Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

Background and Aim: In hospitals, it is of high significance to give due attention to the behavioral and social status of nurses as the key staff of the medical environment, and this can guarantee the desirable quantity and quality in providing services for the patients. The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between social health and work conscience in nurses working in the selected hospitals of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in 2017. Methods: The sample of the present study includes 569 nurses working in the 5 selected hospitals located in Shiraz, Iran. The sampling was conducted with a random stratified sampling in proportion to the strata size. Questionnaires of work conscience and social health as well as the questionnaire of pairwise comparison and decision matrix were used for collecting the data. Structural equation modelling was applied to test the research questions using SmartPLS 3. Results: The findings indicated that there is a significant statistical relationship between social health and work conscience (0.483). Moreover, other findings of the present study indicated that there is a significant relationship between all 7 aspects of social health and work conscience. The effect of social responsibility, conscientiousness, family relationship, attitude to society, social participation, empathy, and social interaction on work conscience was 0.366, 0.209, 0.203, 0.299, 0.147, 0.126, and 0.473 respectively. Conclusion: Since social health and its aspects have significant effects on work conscience, the hospitals are required to give due attention to the nurses' social health.