Qualidade de vida, religiosidade e espiritualidade em profissionais de saúde do Estado de Sergipe

Abstract

Introduction: health professionals are constantly exposed to risks inherent to their work regime, dealing daily with the health-disease process, which can influence the quality of life involving domains of physical health, psychosocial status, personal beliefs and social relationships. With the advancement of science, it has been proven that faith has scientificity and is linked to human physiology and impacts on these domains, as well as religiosity and/or spirituality (R/S). Therefore, aspects of how health professionals feel about quality of life, health and other areas of life, associating them with religiosity and/or spirituality, are important for workers' health, occupational health and well-being. Objectives: to evaluate the perception of quality of life of health professionals in Sergipe and its possible relationships with spirituality and religiosity. Materials and methods: cross-sectional survey study, carried out in public and private hospitals in the State of Sergipe, which included mid- and higher-level health professionals. The data collection instruments were the sociodemographic questionnaire, the World Health Organization Quality Of Life (WHOQOL-SRPB-bref), the Spirituality-Related Attitudes Scale (ARES) and the Duke Religiosity Index (DUREL). All stages of the research were carried out in a virtual environment. Data were exported to R Core Team software (Version 4.1.0). After being coded and tabulated, they were analyzed using descriptive statistics and quantitative variables, presented using measures of central tendency and dispersion measures (mean, median and quartile); for categorical variables, relative and absolute frequencies. The hypothesis of independence between categorical variables was tested using Pearson's Chi-Square and Fisher's Exact tests. Results: 211 professionals participated in the study, with a mean age of 36.6 years (SD:8.2), 74.9% were female, 59.7% identified themselves as brown, 94.3%, 60 .7% have an income of 3 minimum wages. A mean of 71.5 (SD:14) was found in the Physical domains; psychological, 66.8 points (SD:14.8); Social Relations, 69.3 points (SD:16.8); Environment, 61.4 points (SD:14.2); Spirituality/Religion/Personal Beliefs, 74.6 points (SD:15); in the Global Quality of Life item, 69.9 points (SD:20.4); in the General Perception of Health item, 66.4 points (SD:21); and in total: 68.9 points (SD:11.6). On the ARES scale, there was an average of 22.8 points in the Beliefs and Spirituality domain (SD:3); in the domain Spiritual practices, 8.9 points (SD:1.8); in the Spiritual Experiences domain, 9.1 points (SD:1.5); Attitudes/consequences, 13.7 points (SD:2.1); and in total: 54.5 points (SD:7.4). With regard to the DUREL scale, an average of 3.4 points was observed in the Organizational Religiosity domain (SD:1.4), in the Non-Organizational Religiosity domain of 3.1 points (SD:1.6) and in the Religiosity domain Intrinsic score of 5.3 points (SD:2.4). Conclusion: The data from this investigation demonstrated a satisfactory Quality of Life (QoL) for health professionals. Gender, income, level of education and type of service (public or private) positively influenced the perception of QoL. Nursing was the professional category that most showed dissatisfaction and negative impact due to income on QoL. The Religiosity and Spirituality presented by the interviewees were satisfactory (above average) and demonstrated to be influenced by gender, income, sector of work and having children. These findings allowed reflecting on the relationship between QoL, Religiosity and Spirituality (R/S), and concluding that these give meaning to the lives of health professionals, as well as encouraging them to have better relationships. It is suggested that, given the results found, institutional measures be adopted to improve the quality of life of health professionals and that the teaching of religiosity and spirituality be included in academic curricula, once its positive impact on the perception of quality of life is proven.