Influence of Personality Dimensions on Subjective Well-being of Nurses

Nurses constitute frontline health professionals and they are the major workforce in the health sector who comes to terms with many difficult issues from in and out of their. Thus they are prone to experience fluctuating levels of subjective well-being (SWB).

To study the influencing role of personality on the subjective well-being of the individual. Specifically, the study compared the staff nurses and the student nurses on levels of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism dimensions of personality and their levels of subjective well-being.

One hundred and fifty seven staff nurses from a selected urban teaching hospital, Thrissur and 178 student nurses doing B.Sc. Nursing in a selected college of nursing were recruited under this survey design. Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire - Revised 11 and Subjective Well-Being Inventory 12 were used to collect relevant data.

A factorial design statistical procedure (2 x 2 ANOVA) has been applied which showed that SWB of staff nurses and student nurses differ significantly based on their predominant personality trait. The Extraversion dimension of personality predominantly and positively influences nurses’ SWB. On the contrary, the neuroticism dimension of personality found to reduce SWB.

Individual difference in personality traits per se influences SWB of nurses.