Fatigue and Vitamin D Status in Iranian Female Nurses

Abstract

<p><strong>INTRODUCTION: </strong>Given that nurses are among professions with frequent <strong>‎</strong>problems of fatigue, and given the nature of their profession that <strong>‎</strong>provides little exposure to sunlight and the subsequent deficiency of vitamin D, the <strong>‎</strong>present study examined the relation between fatigue and circulating vitamin D levels <strong>‎</strong>in female nurses working in Shahid Beheshti Hospital, Kashan, Iran in 2013. <strong>‎</strong></p><p><strong>MATERIAL &amp; METHODS: </strong>This cross-sectional study was conducted in 200 female nurses working in Shahid Beheshti Hospital. To measure fatigue, fatigue questionnaire containing 9 <strong>‎</strong>questions eliciting the subject’s feeling in scales of 1 to 7, getting a possible score of 9 to <strong>‎‎</strong>63, and Visual Analogue Scale <strong>‎</strong>in which nurses specified their fatigue in a band of zero to 10 were used. <strong>‎</strong>The 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is the most important vitamin D metabolite, also was determined. The data was analyzed by SPSS-16. The Pearson’s correlation of coefficients, t-test, and multiple regression analysis were used in this study.<strong>‎</strong></p><p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>The mean fatigue score of nurses was 38.76±12.66 in questionnaire and 5.73±2.12 in Visual Analog Scale. The 89 per cent of nurses suffered from vitamin D deficiency, <strong>‎‎</strong>9.5 percent of them had normal level and 1.5 per cent had toxicity level of vitamin D.<strong>‎</strong> There was a significant relationship between vitamin D level and fatigue scores (P&lt;0.0001), and visual fatigue scores (P&lt;0.0001). According to multivariate regression analysis, vitamin D level accounted for 13 per cent <strong>‎</strong>of the fatigue based on data on questionnaire and<strong>‎</strong> <strong>‎</strong>18.6 per cent of <strong>‎</strong>fatigue according to Visual Analog Scale. <strong>‎</strong></p><p><strong>CONCLUSION: </strong>High prevalence of fatigue among nurses could be attributed to vitamin D <strong>‎</strong>deficiency.</p>