Abstract

Background: Today, higher demands are placed on primary care to investigate, treat and follow up patients. Sweden has for a long time been hospital heavy and the government wants to control resources for primary care. The lack of district nurses causes that more registered nurses are employed in primary care. When staff with different levels of competence are employed in a workplace with the same tasks, can there be a difference in the psychosocial work environment. The purpose of the study was to describe and compare differences in the psychosocial work environment at and between district nurses and registered nurses. The method was a quantitative descriptive comparative cross-sectional study. Data were collected by the survey QPSNordic34 +. The survey was administered to 118 district nurses and registered nurses and answered by 57. The result showed significant differences in seven out of 37 questions about the psychosocial work environment between registered nurses and district nurses. The differences were in "workload", "influence decision", "encouragement", "working climate" and "management". The conclusion of this study showed that nurses and district nurses in primary care almost estimated their psychosocial work environment similar. The psychosocial work environment was assessed as good. However, nurses described lower support and encouragement from the management.