Sources of occupational stress and coping strategies among nurses who work in admission and emergency departments of hospitals related to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

BACKGROUND: Occupational stress is a recognized problem in health care workers. Nursing has been identified as an occupation that has high levels of stress. This study aimed to investigate the sources of job stress and the adopted coping strategies of nurses who were working in an Accident and emergency department. METHODS: In this descriptive survey ninety emergency ward nurses from three large teaching hospitals in Shiraz were involved. The data was collected through a self-administered questionnaire to identify the sources of job stress and nurse’s profile and Lazarus standard questionnaires to determine the types of coping strategies. RESULTS: The greatest proportion of respondents was women (86.7%), between 23-50 years old with less than 5 years of experience (56.7%). The following stressors were identified: problems related to physical environment, work load, dealing with patients or their relatives and handling their anger, being exposed to health and safety hazards, lack of support by nursing administrators, absence of the corresponding physician in the emergency room and lack of equipment. The most common strategy used by nurses was self-controlling and Positive Reappraisal and the least common strategy was accepting the responsibility. In this study large proportion of nurses used an emotion-focused strategy while Problem-focused approaches were generally less used. CONCLUSIONS: It was concluded that coping skills, positive reappraisal and self-controlling are extremely important for emergency department nurses.