Level of Stress at Nurses Working in Emergency Clinic and Central Intensive Care: University Clinical Centre of Kosovo

Abstract

Background: Emergency Clinic (EC) and Central Intensive Care (CIC) are high-stress environments that directly affect the health status of nurses. Methods: The aim of this study was to assess the level of stress at nurses working in the Emergency Clinic and nurses working in the Central Intensive Care. The study included 90 nurses, 45 nurses working in Emergency Clinic and 45 nurses working in Central Intensive Care. The study applied the Emergency Nurse Stress Questionnaire as an instrument to gather the data. This questionnaire was adopted from the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire in order to serve for the function and aim of the present study. Results: Nurses’ cohort-age ranged from 20 to 62 years. The largest proportion of respondents 40 (44.4%) was in the 20 - 30 age group, 58 (64.4%) were married, 60 (66.6%) hold bachelor degree and (33.3%) were with secondary school educational level. In terms of work-related fatigue, significant difference was found in working hours, participants reported that there was a significant difference in fatigue between 12 hours shift nurses (61 ± 10.5) compared to 8 hours nurses (41 ± 23.6) with P < 0.001. Results indicated that a vast majority of participants reported moderate to high levels of stress (81% of participants). There was no significant difference in the level of stress between the two groups of participants. There were also no significant differences compared to their demographic characteristics. Conclusion: These findings emphasize the role of using and assuring adequate strategies for ensuring quality management and finding ways of facilitating the increase in the number of nursing staff in these two departments because workplace overload and fatigue are potential factors that increase nurses’ stress levels.