Correlation Studies On Work-Family Conflict And Social Support Of Health Professionals In County Government-Run Hospitals In Shandong Province

Background:Work and family are two most important areas in most adults'life. Conflict and collisions have been created in many aspects between work and family with economic development, social progress and the changes of values and family structures. Work-family conflict will have a negative impact on job performance, job satisfaction and will lead to individual job burnout and dimission; and will lower individual life satisfaction and well-being, and will have a serious effect on harmonious family. Health professionals will be restricted by time and energy, and they will have sense of work-family conflict because of the particularity of their profession. Moreover, health professionals will be confronted with greater challenges and pressure with the reform and development of medical and health. Social support reflects the relationship between individual, and satisfactory social support may provide some help in aspect of material or spirit. It has been discovered that social support plays an active role in relieving work-family conflict, so studying on work-family conflict and social support of health professionals will have a great practical significance.Objectives:The purpose of the study is to analyze the status and the influencing factors of work-family conflict and social support of health professionals in county government-run hospitals in Shandong province and to analyze the correlations between social support and work-family conflict, and then countermeasures and suggestions were put forward according to the results. Methods:In this study, a multi-stage stratified cluster random sampling method was used. The interviewers were health professionals in county government-run hospitals in Weihai, Dongying, Heze of Shandong province. Self-designed questionnaires were used in this survey and they were finished by health professionals under the guidance of investigators uniformly trained.160 questionnaires were distributed per hospital so 3200 questionnaires were distributed in all and 2903 copies were collected, so the effective rate is 90.7%. ACCESS software was used to establish the database and SPSS 16.0 and LISREL 8.70 were used to statistical analysis.Data analysis methods are:(1)Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to test reliability of the scale and evaluate the internal consistency of the scale. (2)Descriptive analysis:descriptive statistics were used to analyze the factors of demographic characteristics, work related problems, work-family conflict and social support, means and standard deviations were used to express the numeric variables and proportion was used to express the categorical variables. (3)Independent samples t test, one-way ANOVA and General linear model were used to analyze the influencing factors. (4)Spearman correlation and Pearson correlation were used to analyze the relations and intimate degree between factors of demographic characteristics, work related problems, social support and work-family conflict.Main Results:(1) The mean of work-family conflict, time conflict, behavior conflict and pressure conflict is 29.39,10.33,9.36,9.70 respectively according to the scores of health professionals. The mean of total social support, objective support, subjective support and the utilization of support is 45.28,8.32,27.27,9.69 respectively. (2) Univariate analysis revealed that gender, age, marital status, specialty, working age, highest qualification, professional position and administrative post in the factors of demographic characteristics and the factors related to working problems including working load, the sense of working pressure, working positive emotions and negative emotions, which factors had statistical significance to work-family conflict and social support of health professionals. Multivariate analysis revealed that the influencing factors of work-family conflict included gender, specialty, working load, the sense of working pressure, working positive emotions and negative emotions, and the influencing factors of social support included gender, marital status, highest qualification, working load, working positive emotions and negative emotions. (3) Correlation analysis revealed that negative correlation existed between total social support, objective support, subjective support, the utilization of support and work-family conflict.Countermeasures and Suggestions:According to the study results and the actual situations of health professionals, countermeasures and suggestions were put forward as follows:(1) Individual level: ascertain the roles in work and family and expect the reasonable roles, through positive way of thinking increasing positive and optimistic mood in order to lower the sense of conflict in cognitive aspects; the methods of solving things directly or seeking helps initiatively were used to relieve work-family conflict. (2) Family level: parents' help and understanding, attention and confidence from spouse, sharing the housework reasonably to create a harmonious family atmosphere. (3) Hospital level: flexible working system:under the basis of finishing and assuring the quality of jobs to schedule time flexibly; providing family support:providing family welfare and services under the concept of "people-oriented"; support from superiors:providing good working conditions and fair working atmosphere, providing the opportunities for promotion and development. (5) Society level:advocating reasonable values about work and family in social culture, making policies for workers to provide family welfare and services, strengthening supervision on laws related to jobs.