Sleep is vital to a person?s quality of life and plays a vital role in the recovery and conservation of energy. In recent years, the healthcare industry in Taiwan has undergone dramatic changes, including pharmaceutical companies transforming their marketing channels, markedly adjusting their products, and the differences regarding purchasing methods and medication products between large scale, and middle to small scale hospitals. Since the occupation of medical sales is different from other jobs, and due to the special perspective that society has towards this industry, people working in this industry often suffer from increased stress, and their sleep quality is influenced as a result. Therefore, this research aims to explore the relationship between sleep quality and job stress among this particular group.
The Research subjects of this study are those who work for original or local pharmaceutical companys or agents in Taichung, Changhua and Nantou as pharmaceutical sales representatives in NHI-contracted hospitals and clinics in central Taiwan. Research subjects were chosen randomly from an estimated 150 questionnaires that were completed.Research instruments included self-report questionnaires assessing personal factors, a job stress evaluation chart, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and a daytime mental status evaluation scale. A total of 116 questionnaires were retrieved, with a response rate of approximately 70%.
This study finds that, of the research subjects, 39% had good overall sleep quality (37 subjects), 68.1% had poor sleep quality (79 subjects), and the average score of overall sleep quality was 11.54 (SD = 2.35). In addition, sleep quality during weekends is better than that on weekdays. Furthermore, this study found that there is a significant relationship between sleep quality, job stress and personal factors (i.e., hospital attributes, affiliated companies). Therfore, the greater the level of stress of the research subjects, different hospital attributes, and affiliated companies, the worse the quality of sleep. The explanatory factor of greater work stress, hospital attributes and affiliated companies on sleep quality is 63%.
The factors that affect the sleep quality of the research subjects in this study can be mainly attributed to hospitals. Because the decisions of regional hospitals tend to be influenced by the policies of the Bureau of National Health Insurance,
pharmaceutical sales representative often need to deal with the issue of price negotiation, causing them stress, and influencing the quality of their sleep. In addition, often due to different service companies, the job stress of the research subjects usually varies with the varying systems of the company and their quality of sleep is thus affected. Although each pharmaceutical company should strive to reduce job stress, it is hoped that research subjects will better adapt themselves
to the environment so as to improve their own sleep quality, as the medical environent will not improve.
