Prevalence of Depressive Symptoms and Associated Factors Among Radiographers in the West Bank Hospitals of Palestine: A Cross-Sectional Study
Date
2019-12-24
Authors
Obaid, Ahmed
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
Study title: Prevalence of Depressive Symptoms and Associated Factors Among Radiographers in the West Bank Hospitals of Palestine: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Student name: The study carried out by Ahmed Obaid and under supervision of Dr. Adnan Sarhan.
Background: Radiographers are one of the most important and needful components of the workforce in the health care system. They fall under the category of supporting medical professions, thus, they are frontline medical service providers. They are face with occupational stressors in different ways which may contribute to diverse adverse mental effects including depression.
Aim: This study aims to investigate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and explore its associated risk factors among radiographers working in West Bank hospitals.
Method: A Cross-Sectional design is used for the study. Beck’s depression inventory-II Arabic version is administered to respondents and Statistical Package of the Social Science (SPSS) version 21 is used for data analysis.
Results: The prevalence of depressive symptoms among radiographers was 75.69%. Multivariate logistic analysis showed that number of children is one, two to five and more than five (P<0.05, OR 22.59, 95%CI 1.98-256.60), (P<0.05, OR 12.87, 95%CI 1.51-109.43), (P<0.05, OR 5.31, 95%CI 1.01-27.79) respectively, male (P<0.05, OR 13.587, 95%CI 3.99-46.21) and bachelor’s degree (P<0.05, OR 11.10, 95 %CI 1.04-118.41) were positively associated with mild to moderate depressive symptoms. Whereas private sector (P<0.05, OR 0.116, 95%CI0.041-0.333) and experience period of more than 21 years (P<0.05, OR 0.133, 95%CI0.019-0.924) were negatively associated with mild to moderate depressive symptoms. Regarding severe depression working in private sector (P<0.05, OR 8.61, 95%CI 3.006-24.68) and working experience period of more than 21 years (P<0.05, OR 7.52, 95% CI 1.08-52.24) were positively associated with severe depressive symptoms. Whereas number of children is one , two to five and more than five ((P<0.05, OR 0.044, 95%CI 0.004-0.503), (P<0.05, OR 0.078, 95%CI 10.009=0.660), (P<0.05, OR 0.188, 95%CI 0.036-0.985) respectively, male (P<0.05, OR 0.074, 95%CI 0.022-0.250) and bachelor’s degree (P<0.05, OR 0.090, 95 %CI 0.008-0.960) were negatively associated with severe depressive symptoms.
Conclusion: Depressive symptoms among radiographers found to be prevalent. Gender, number of children, experience period, educational level and working sector were associated with the generation of depressive symptoms. Efficient investigations and interventions such as mental health education courses, improving radiographer`s patient communication, keeping up with modern imaging modalities and developing coping mechanisms for radiographers aim to improve the radiographer’s mental health from the view of depressive symptoms. Studies to identify possible risk factors, causes of depressive symptoms, as well as to investigate its effects and consequences on the radiographer`s health workforce are needed.
Description
Keywords
Depression , Radiographers , West Bank