The Relationship Between Perceived Social Support and Quality of Nurse’s Working Life at Neonatal Intensive Care Units in Selected Hospitals of Ahwaz University of Medical Sciences; 2016

Introduction: Social support has a key role in improvement of quality of working lifeof nurses. The present study aimed at measuring the quality of nurse’s working life andperceived social support and examine their relationship in neonatal intensive care unitnurses.Methods: In the present descriptivecorrelational study, the statistical populationconsisted of nurses working at neonatal intensive care units of selected hospitalsaffiliated to Ahwaz University of Medical Sciences, selected by census. Overall, 98nurses were selected. Since the number of employed nurses was approximately thesame, all nurses were selected by the census method and based on the inclusioncriteria.Tools used included the Demographic Questionnaire”, “MultidimensionalScale of Perceived Social Support and Quality of Nurses Work Life . Validity of thequestionnaires was confirmed by 12 experts, and its reliability was confirmed by theCronbach s alpha coefficient. Data were analyzed using the SPSS20 software.Results: The highest mean value in social support belonged to the family dimension(5.19± 1.05) and the lowest to friends (4.50± 1.11), and overall mean social supportvalue was 4.78 ± 0.99. The quality of working life had the highest mean value in the working life dimension (3.67± 0.72) and the lowest in personal life (3.38± 0.89),and overall mean value of quality of working life was 3.57± 0.57 in nurses. The obtainedresults showed a positive correlation between social support and the quality of workinglife in nurses (r=0.25, P=0.02).Conclusions: The obtained results showed a significant and positive relationshipbetween perceived social support and quality of nursing working life. However, therelationship between subscales of these two variables was mildly confirmed. Generally,the present study results are in accordance with the results of previous studies.