The relationship between quality of work life and distractions in operating room nurses: a correlational study

The operating room is a work environment where nurses perform high-risk and complex procedures, requiring situational awareness, focus, information sharing, and effective communication skills. Therefore, a positive work environment that impacts the quality of work life is critical for nurses to provide quality and safe care. The research aimed to examine the correlation between quality of work life and distractions in nurses working in the operating room (OR). A descriptive, cross-sectional correlational design was employed. The sample consisted of 152 operating room nurses recruited using the snowball sampling method. Data were collected using demographicinformation form, the Quality of Nursing Work Life Scale (QNWLS), and the Disruptions in Surgery Index (DiSI). All statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics (v21.0) and PROCESS v3.5. Descriptive statistics, group comparisons (t-test, Kruskal–Wallis with Bonferroni correction), and Pearson correlation analyses were conducted. Moderation effects examined via bootstrapped (5,000 resamples) Model 1 analyses at a 95% confidence level, considering p < 0.05 as statistically significant. The three sub-dimensions reported as most frequently causing distracting were coordination, situational awareness (48.39%), individual skills, performance and personality (48.30%), and team and organisational interruptions (47.70%). All attention distraction frequency subdimensions were positively correlated with each other at moderate and high levels (p < 0.01). With the exception of the patient-related interruptions subscale (p > 0.05), all other subscales and total frequency score demonstrated weak but statistically significant negative correlations with the QNWLS total score (p < 0.01). Age, gender, education level, and years of work experience did not have a significant moderating effect (p > 0.05). The results underscore the potential relevance of distracting factors in relation to nurses’ work-life quality and suggest that institutional strategies aimed at managing intraoperative disruptions may be beneficial, while warranting further investigation through longitudinal or experimental designs.