title: Fatigue and Vitamin D Status in Iranian Female Nurses.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Given that nurses are among professions with frequent ‎problems of fatigue, and given the nature of their profession that ‎provides little exposure to sunlight and the subsequent deficiency of vitamin D, the ‎present study examined the relation between fatigue and circulating vitamin D levels ‎in female nurses working in Shahid Beheshti Hospital, Kashan, Iran in 2013. ‎
  
  
  METHODS
  This cross-sectional study was conducted in 200 female nurses working in Shahid Beheshti Hospital. To measure fatigue, fatigue questionnaire containing 9 ‎questions eliciting the subject's feeling in scales of 1 to 7, getting a possible score of 9 to ‎‎63, and Visual Analogue Scale ‎in which nurses specified their fatigue in a band of zero to 10 were used. ‎The 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is the most important vitamin D metabolite, also was determined. The data was analyzed by SPSS-16. The Pearson's correlation of coefficients, t-test, and multiple regression analysis were used in this study.‎
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean fatigue score of nurses was 38.76±12.66 in questionnaire and 5.73±2.12 in Visual Analog Scale. The 89 per cent of nurses suffered from vitamin D deficiency, ‎‎9.5 percent of them had normal level and 1.5 per cent had toxicity level of vitamin D.‎ There was a significant relationship between vitamin D level and fatigue scores (P<0.0001), and visual fatigue scores (P<0.0001). According to multivariate regression analysis, vitamin D level accounted for 13 per cent ‎of the fatigue based on data on questionnaire and‎ ‎18.6 per cent of ‎fatigue according to Visual Analog Scale. ‎
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  High prevalence of fatigue among nurses could be attributed to vitamin D ‎deficiency.
authors.affiliation: Trauma Nursing Research Center, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, I. R. Iran. hamedir2010@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Negin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Masoudi Alavi
authors.forename: Mahla
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Madani
authors.forename: Zohre
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Sadat
authors.forename: Hamed
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Haddad Kashani
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reza Sharif
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015897:Comorbidity; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005221:Fatigue / Q000097:blood* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran / Q000453:epidemiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009726:Nurses / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015995:Prevalence; D014807:Vitamin D / Q000097:blood*; D014808:Vitamin D Deficiency / Q000097:blood* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D014807:Vitamin D