Psychological Distress in Norwegian Nurses and Teachers over Nine Years

Abstract

Psychological dist ress have been found to be high and influence nega- tively nurses’ and teachers’ work. In t his nine - year project , we present the first lon- gitudinal study comparing psychological distress from 1467 students and young pro- fessionals in nursing and teaching. Psychological distress was measured with GHQ 12 at the start and the end of their studies an d three and six years after graduation. Both descriptive statistics and estimated models were used to assess psychological distress over time. Psychological distress increased significantly in both groups dur- ing education. The reduction of psychological di stress was significant among the nurses , and they clearly showed a “healthy worker effect” when coming into clinical work. The teachers had a small and non - significant reduction in the same period and did not show a positive effect after starting pedagogic al work.