Abstract
To assess the nurse professional practice environment of neonatal units and its relationship with the levels and main sources of occupational stress. Cross-sectional descriptive, exploratory, correlational study performed with nursing professionals of neonatal units of four public hospitals. A sociodemographic/professional questionnaire, the Brazilian version of Practice Environment Scale, and the Work Stress Scale were applied. In the analysis, mean, standard deviation, and Pearson chi-squared, Likelihood Ratio, and Mann Whitney U tests were adopted for association among variables. Participating professionals amounted to 269. The practice environment was evaluated as favorable by more than half of the sample (63.6%), showing a significant statistical association which was inversely proportional with occupational stress (p < 0.001). The insufficient number of professionals for quality care was the major source of stress for nursing technicians, whereas teamwork with doctors was the predominant factor for the evaluation of environment quality and high stress levels of nurses. Unfavorable practice environments increase the stress levels of nursing professionals in neonatal units and may compromise patient safety.
Highlights
The nursing professional practice environment is d efined by the different factors that improve or reduce professional capability of proficiently performing nursing skills and providing high-quality care to patients[1]
The participants’ profile corroborates other studies performed with the nursing team in neonatal care environments, which have shown a prevalence of women, nursing technicians, young adults with experience in the area and viable workload[14,15,16,17,18,19]
Upon assessment of nursing p ractice environment in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) (Table 1), a predominance of favorable aspects is perceived in four of the five subscales of Practice Environment Scale (PES), a fact which was demonstrated by a multicenter study with 1247 NICU nurses of North American hospitals[20], whose scores ranged from 1.93 and 3.79, with an overall mean of 2.88 (±0.32), characterizing favorable environments for nursing team practice[20]
Summary
The nursing professional practice environment is d efined by the different factors that improve or reduce professional capability of proficiently performing nursing skills and providing high-quality care to patients[1]. Among the factors that negatively influence the practice environment in hospitals, occupational stress is emphasized This is an emotional and physical condition which may have harmful effects and often leads to incapacity of meeting necessities, resources, and capabilities which are demanded from workers[5]. This is a major global issue in the health area and is considered to have become a main management challenge in the last decades[6,7]. Risk factors for major occupational stress were verified to be being female, married, with lower education levels and increased work hours, and working at critical units, nursing wards and university hospitals[8]
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