Assessing Psychological Well-being among Nurses: A Case Study of Pemba Provincial Hospital, Mozambique

In the last seven years, due to the terrorism situation that is plaguing the province of Cabo Delgado, the provincial hospital of Pemba, being the largest in that province has been very crowded, and nurses are dealing with this phenomenon every day. The nurses are directly involved in this phenomenon with the demanding nature of their work including exposure to trauma, suffering and high levels of stress, which patients bring. The current study aimed to examine psychological well-being among nurses in Pemba Provincial Hospital in Mozambique. The study adopted descriptive research design. The total population of 150 nurses was used as a census sample due to the manageable size. The data was collected using Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS) developed by psychologist Ryff (1989). The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and particularly frequencies and percentages with SPSS version 23. Results indicated that 44.3% (58 nurses) reported low psychological well-being, suggesting significant emotional distress, reduced life satisfaction, and potential struggles with coping mechanisms. On the other hand, 55.7% (73 nurses) exhibited moderate psychological well-being. The study concluded that the workload for nurses may interfere with their psychological well-being. The study recommends to the hospital administration to come up with strategies such as policy-based, psychological interventions, workload reallocation and professional development to enhance the psychological well-being of nurses.