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Stresses at work and quarrels at home are a guarantee of health problems
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Nurses and other healthcare workers, especially those on night duty, often suffer from muscle pain, especially in the neck area.
" Conflicts in the families of healthcare workers can distract them from their work and cause stress," said lead author Dr. Sung Soo Kim. "If the management of a hospital where there is an employee with such problems takes measures to eliminate them or tries to somehow help, then this can improve the productivity of the person and will only be an advantage for the hospital."
In addition, according to experts, an unfavorable atmosphere in the family can cause chronic muscle pain.
This study further confirms the fact that overtime and overly stressful work schedules can cause family discord and reduce a person’s productivity. In particular, for hospital workers, this can result in inattention to patients and insufficient care for a sick person.
Other studies have found that difficult relationships at home can lead to depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and cardiovascular disease.
But can problems at home combined with stress at work cause physical pain?
A team of scientists led by Dr. Kim tried to find out by surveying two thousand healthcare workers whose responsibilities included direct patient care.
The experts asked the participants to fill out questionnaires.
The experts also took into account external factors that could provoke muscle pain.
They found that nurses and other health care workers who reported being busy at work and having little time to spend quality time with their families were about twice as likely to develop muscle pain in the neck or shoulder area in the next three months.
Very often, medical workers, and especially nurses, work night shifts or, which is not uncommon, work two shifts at once. As research shows, job responsibilities and household chores, which sometimes lead to depression, can cause the development of chronic muscle pain, as well as provoke other health problems.
The consequences of such a race to fulfill all the duties assigned to a person can be quite serious, and this concerns not only health care workers, but also the whole of society as a whole.
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