The relationships among unit culture, work stress, compassion fatigue and sense of wellbeing in operating room nurses in level one or two trauma centers

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among unit culture, work stress, compassion fatigue, and sense of wellbeing in operating room (OR) nurses employed in level one and two trauma centers. Wellbeing was measured by two components, mental and physical. Several studies (Coeling, 1992; Hawkins & Kratsch, 2004; Seago, 1996; Waters, 2004; Wesorick, 2002) have documented the characteristics of organizational culture or organizational subcultures (nursing units) and the negative impact the culture has on individual wellbeing of nurses and the quality of patient care. This descriptive correlational study was guided by the Culture-Work-Health model (Peterson & Wilson, 1998). The concepts deducted from the model were organizational culture, management systems, employee health, and quality of work life.;Additional correlation analyses on unit culture, work stress, compassion fatigue, and mental wellbeing demonstrated moderate statistically significant correlations among the variables. Unit culture correlated with work stress r&barbelow; = -.39, p&barbelow; < .001, and with mental wellbeing at r&barbelow; = .27, p&barbelow; < .001. Work stress correlated with compassion fatigue at r&barbelow; = .38, p&barbelow; < .001, and with mental wellbeing at r&barbelow; = -.39, p&barbelow; < .001 Compassion fatigue correlated with mental wellbeing at r&barbelow; = -.53, p&barbelow; < .001. No statistically significant relationship was found between the predictor variables and physical wellbeing.;The findings of this study revealed that the operating room registered nurses in this study have a positive perception of the OR culture in which they worked, had a low to average work stress and little to no risk of developing compassion fatigue. The findings also showed these OR nurses reported average to normal mental and physical wellbeing. An implication of this study is raising the awareness of compassion fatigue.;A convenience sample of 138 OR nurses completed a demographic questionnaire and four research instruments, the Organizational Culture Survey, the Nursing Stress Scale, the Compassion Fatigue subscale of the Revised Professional Quality of Life Scale, and the SF-12v2 Health Survey. Two stepwise multiple regression analyses were computed to test the research hypothesis that the linear combination of unit culture, work stress, and compassion fatigue would predict sense of wellbeing better than any one variable alone. The results revealed that two variables, unit culture and compassion fatigue, predicted 32.4% (R&barbelow; = .57, p&barbelow; = .002) of mental wellbeing. Work stress was excluded from the multiple regression on mental wellbeing due to multicollinearity. Unit culture, work stress, and compassion fatigue failed to predict any significant variance in physical wellbeing. Although the finding for physical wellbeing was not statistically significant, the hypothesis was partially supported based on the statistically significant finding of the multiple regression on mental wellbeing.