[Psychophysiological distress among health care professionals working in Chilean public hospitals]

The public health reform in Chile resulted in changes in working conditions and organization of health centers.

To examine the presence of psychophysiological symptoms in professionals of public hospitals in the Metropolitan Region and their association with current working conditions.

A questionnaire of quality of working life was applied to a sample of 80 physicians and 110 nurses. The questionnaire considers scales and open questions.

Nurses had a higher level of discomfort than physicians (p < 0.01) and had significantly higher scores for emotional distress, physical fatigue, digestive disorders, headache, insomnia, back pain and muscle tension (p < 0.01). There were statistically significant negative correlations between psychophysiological distress and working conditions (r = -0.418), social climate (r = -0.395), satisfaction with the organization (r = -0.337) and psychosocial well-being (r = -0.267). A regression model showed that 21% of the variance in psychophysiological distress was explained by working conditions, psychosocial well-being and adaptation to the organization.

There is a relationship between the high prevalence of psychophysiological symptoms and bad working conditions of public health professionals.