Studies have shown that adverse workplace factors can increase the risk of ill-health in hospital workers, but more comprehensive measures of the psychosocial work environment are needed.
To test a comprehensive and theory-based psychosocial work environment questionnaire and analyze associations with mental health in a sample of Danish hospital workers.
Questionnaire-based cross-sectional study with 343 female employees from a large Danish hospital, including patient care workers (nurses, nurse assistants, midwives) and laboratory technicians.
The psychosocial work environment was measured with 14 scales from the Copenhagen psychosocial questionnaire, version I, covering three main areas: demands at work, work organization and interpersonal relations at work. We further measured self-rated mental health and sociodemographic and employment characteristics of the participants. Cronbach's alphas, analyses of covariance, one-sample t-tests, partial correlations and linear regression models were used to analyze data.
Of the 14 work psychosocial workplace scales 12 showed a satisfactory internal consistency (alpha>0.70). Patient care workers had more quantitative, emotional and cognitive demands (all p-values