The purposes of this research were to study sleep quality and the predictors of sleep quality as perceived by nurses working at the southern regional hospital and medical centers. Two hundred and forty nurses were selected by random sampling. The research parameters were personal factors, fatigue and the quality of sleep. Fatigue and Sleep Quality scales were tested for the content validity by five experts. The reliability with Cronbach's alpha coefficient of Fatigue and Sleep Quality Scales were 0.92 and 0.72, respectively. The data were analyzed by percentage, mean, standard deviation, Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression analysis.
The major findings were as follows:
1. Nurses had good levels of sleep quality (X=110, SD=16.74, total scores = 150).
2. Fatigue had a significant negative relationship to sleep quality (r=-.521), while doing exercise had a significant positive relationship to quality of sleep (r=.204).
3. Variables significantly predicting the sleep quality of nurses, at p=.05, were fatigue and doing exercise. These predictors accounted for 28.7% of the variance.
These results indicated that fatigue was a factor decreasing sleep quality but doing exercise was a factor improving sleep quality of nurses in the southern regional hospital and medical centers.