Impact of diarrhoea in intensive care unit: A questionnaire-based study of effect on workload and mental health among nursing staff.

Objectives: Mental health plays a crucial role in everyone’s life. Nursing staff are at high risk of work stress and mental health problems. Risk factors contributing to these issues include personal factors, overwork, understaffing, emotional exhaustion, and exposure to traumatic events. This leads to mental health-related symptoms and work-related fatigue. Managing diarrhoea patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) is also a stressful job for nurses, which is often underrecognized. In this study, we aimed to assess the effect of ICU diarrhoea on work burden and mental health among nursing staff. Material and Methods: This was a questionnaire-based study conducted among consenting ICU nursing staff with work experience >6 months. The preformed questionnaire was circulated via Google Forms. Data was then recorded in an MS Excel spreadsheet program. Relevant statistical tests were applied, and results were obtained. Results: In this survey, 246 participants took part, among which 65.9% are females. All of them (100%) suffer from one or more symptoms related to mental stress and overwork. Conclusion: Mental health and work-life balance are very important in everyone’s life. Nursing staff come across many potentially modifiable risk factors, among which managing a diarrhoea patient is often an underrecognized risk factor. Symptoms of overwork and mental stress should be recognised early with various validated tools and must be promptly addressed by various strategies from the organisational level to the individual level.