Managing occupational stress among nursing officers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Occupational stress is a significant concern for the global nursing community due to highly demanding job role, psychological challenges and composite work environments. Occupational stressors among nursing officers, coping mechanisms employed to cope with stressors and correlations among the stressors and coping mechanisms are investigated by this study. A quantitative, cross sectional study design was adopted. Data was collected from a sample of 131 nursing officers of a government tertiary care hospital using a structured online questionnaire consisting of three sections; demographic data section, Expanded Nursing Stress Scale (ENSS), Brief COPE inventory. Work load related stressors (Mean-3.74) and supervisor related stressors (Mean-3.59) were the most commonly experienced according to descriptive statistics where the least reported stressors were related to treatment uncertainty (Mean-0.87) and discrimination (Mean-0.82). Emotion focused stress coping strategies as humour (Mean-3.76), self-blame (Mean-3.72) and venting (Mean-3.69) were frequently used by the nursing officers instead of problem focused coping strategies like planning and active coping. Statistically significant negative associations were identified using the Pearson correlation analysis between all nine subscales of the ENSS and coping strategies. Correlations related to work load (r = -0.913) and supervisor problems (r = -0.874) were strongly negative suggesting the decreased use of effective coping strategies with increased stress levels. Oneway ANOVA test demonstrated significant differences among the coping strategy usage (4.162). Tukey’s HSD test further confirmed significant difference (p < 0.001) in usage of humour, self-blame and venting as coping strategies. Results of the study conclude the major contribution of work related and supervisor related stressors to occupational stress among nursing officers while emotion focused coping strategies were dominantly used. Study findings emphasize the importance of occupational stress management among nursing officers and training needs to employ effective healthy coping strategies.