Occupational stress in nurses in an Australian general hospital.

Abstract

AbstractThis paper reports the levels of stress experienced by registered and student nurses in a large metropolitan teaching hospital. A scale measure of current stress was developed and its psychometric properties assessed. Similar scale measures were constructed for the independent variables: nurses' personal attributes and perceived stressors. There was a symmetric distribution of stress scores and further analyses focused on the approximate 30% of nurses at the “high stress” end of the scale, assumed to be experiencing excessive stress. High stress was strongly associated with feeling poorly, poor self‐worth, dissatisfaction with social supports, feeling worse as pressure builds up and dissatisfaction with own coping. The particular stressors affecting registered and student nurses, respectively, were identified.In addition, lack of responsiveness of the nursing and medical managements affected stress among Registered Nurses (RN's), while lack of status in the medical team and job overload were significant stressors of Student Nurses (SN's). The risk of being highly stressed, given the presence of various personal attributes and job stressors, was estimated using logistic regression. Stress levels in different areas of the hospital were compared, and the personal and job stressor factors that most accounted for the high levels of stress in different areas were identified.