The Relationship Between Caring Roles and Fatigue in Intensive Care Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Study

Intensive care nurses experience significant levels of fatigue while providing care to their patients. High levels of fatigue may negatively impact nurses' orientation to their caring roles, and this orientation may also be a cause of fatigue.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between intensive care nurses' orientations towards their caregiving roles and their fatigue levels.

The sample of this cross-sectional and correlational study was conducted with nurses working in the intensive care units of a hospital in northwestern Turkey. The 'Personal Information Form', 'Chalder Fatigue Scale' and 'Nursing Care Role Orientation Scale' were used for collecting research data.

In this study, conducted with 110 nurses, the average fatigue score for intensive care nurses was 19.00 ± 7.60, with a physical fatigue score of 13.13 ± 5.20 and a mental fatigue score of 5.87 ± 2.81. The average score of nurses' orientation towards caregiving roles was 82.00 ± 7.68. Female nurses and those working in critical care for less than a year experienced greater fatigue levels (t = 2.131, p = 0.035 and F = 2.858, p = 0.041, respectively). Nurses' orientation towards caregiving roles differed based on their education level and professional experience (p < 0.05). There was a positive correlation between nurses' fatigue scores and orientation towards caregiving roles (p < 0.05).

Intensive care nurses were able to effectively adapt to their nursing care roles despite high levels of fatigue and there was a positive relationship between nurses' physical and mental fatigue levels and their adaptation to their care roles. The results of this study, which cannot be generalised to all intensive care nurses because it was conducted in a single hospital, reveal that as nurses' orientation towards their caring roles increases, their fatigue levels also increase.

For intensive care nurses to effectively care for their patients, they need to be well oriented in their caregiving roles. However, efforts to be well oriented in caregiving can increase nurses' fatigue levels. Considering that reducing physical and mental fatigue will increase the success of the care nurses provide, the importance of providing work environments that will facilitate intensive care nurses' orientation to their caregiving roles in reducing the fatigue levels they experience becomes evident.