Occupational environment and psychoactive substance consumption among nurses

Objective: To analyze the relation between the work environment and psychoactive substance consumption among hospital nurses. Methods: Cross-sectional and descriptive study, involving nurses from three public hospitals in a city in the South of Brazil, being two medium-complexity and one high-complexity institution. The study population consisted of 221 nurses. Based on this figure, the stratified sample size was calculated, considering a 50% proportion, 95% confidence level and 5% maximum error, resulting in a minimum number of 175 participants. Through proportional stratification per institution, a minimum of 103 high-complexity nurses was defined, as well as 36 nurses from each medium-complexity institution. The following inclusion criteria were adopted: having worked at the institution for at least one year and not being on leave. The data were collected between October 2015 and April 2016. In the data collection, sociodemographic and occupational information, the Nursing Work Index - Revised and the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test. The data were analyzed in the software Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 20.0. Initially, the normality was verified by means of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Descriptive analyses were developed by absolute and relative frequencies for the categorical variables; and medians and dispersion measures for the numerical variables. Results: Alcohol, tobacco and sedatives were the most consumed substances. The monthly income was positively correlated with alcohol consumption among nurses at the medium-complexity hospitals (p=0.01). At the high-complexity hospital, alcohol consumption was negatively correlated with the physician-nurse index (p=0.03). Autonomy, physician-nurse index and organizational support were negatively correlated with the use of sedatives (p<0.01; p<0.01; p=0.02, respectively). Conclusion: The more negative the nurse's work environment, mainly in the relation with physicians, organizational support and autonomy, the greater the consumption of psychoactive substances.