The Mental Workload and Its Correlated Factors in Nurses Working in Intensive Care Units

Introduction: One of the factors influencing the behavior and performance of nurses at the workplace is the mental workload. It is the amount of mental effort that a person uses during doing his or her task. Objective: The current study aimed at evaluating the mental workload and its related factors in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) affiliated to medical and educational centers of Guilan University of Medical Sciences. Materials and Methods: The current analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 on 105 nurses working in ICUs of educational and medical centers affiliated to Guilan University of Medical Sciences in Rasht, Iran using national aeronautics and space administration-task load index (NASA-TLX). This tool measures mental workload on the whole and separately under six subscales of mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and frustration with regard to their weight, rate, and score. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential (Pearson correlation test, t-test, and ANOVA) statistics. Results: The Mean±SD mental workload was reported 70.21±12.4, where physical demand dimension had the highest score compared to other dimensions (Mean±SD weight=77.73±12; rate=3.25; score=17.01). In addition, the mental workload of ICU nurses had a significant relationship with the type of ICU, the age of nurses, and number of patients under their care in each shift (P<0.05). Conclusion: Based on the results, the mental workload of younger nurses increased with the increase in the number of patients under care. With the appropriate distribution of human resources and proper training for young nurses to control occupational stress and modify intra-sectoral and intra-hospital rules, their mental load may be reduced.