Mining the relationships between psychosocial factors and fatigue dimensions among registered nurses

Recent challenges related to patient safety, and medical errors in healthcare have led to a focus on increasing quality across healthcare organizations. Psychosocial factors and fatigue have been identified as significant factors related to nurses' performance. However, previous studies have not clearly established the multi-factorial relationships between psychosocial factors and multiple dimensions of fatigue in nurses. Hence, the purpose of this study was to identify relationships between multiple psychosocial factors and dimensions of fatigue using data mining classification methods. Survey data from registered nurse perceptions of psychosocial factors, mental, physical and total fatigue levels were analyzed using a tree-based Chi-Square Automatic Interaction Detection. The results demonstrate that psychological job demand and skill discretion have a strong association with all dimensions of fatigue. Changes in mental and total fatigue levels are also significantly associated with the level of decision authority. Finally, coworker social support is associated with changes in physical fatigue, and supervisor social support is associated with differences in total fatigue levels. In conclusion, there are varying relationships between psychosocial factors from a demand–control–support model and mental, physical, and total dimensions of fatigue in registered nurses. Through increased understanding of these associations, healthcare organizations, nursing managers, and policy makers can better design interventions to mitigate fatigue.Relevance to industryDue to challenges related to quality, cost, and shortages of qualified personnel, healthcare organizations must understand human factors, such as fatigue, that can impact nurse performance, safety, and satisfaction. This study identifies multi-factorial relationships between fatigue dimensions and psychosocial factors in registered nurses. The results may help nursing leaders in designing comprehensive interventions that account for psychosocial aspects of the work environment to reduce nurse fatigue.

► We mined interactions between psychosocial factors and fatigue dimensions.
► Changes in fatigue levels associated with psychosocial factors were evaluated.
► Low psychological job demands are associated with lowest fatigue levels.
► Psychosocial factors associated with highest fatigue levels vary across dimensions.