Abstract
BackgroundNursing is perceived as a strenuous job. Although past research has documented that stress influences nurses’ health in association with quality of life, the relation between stress and caring behaviors remains relatively unexamined, especially in the Greek working environment, where it is the first time that this specific issue is being studied. The aim was to investigate and explore the correlation amidst occupational stress, caring behaviors and their quality of life in association to health.MethodsA correlational study of nurses (N = 246) who worked at public and private units was conducted in 2013 in Greece. The variables were operationalized using three research instruments: (1) the Expanded Nursing Stress Scale (ENSS), (2) the Health Survey SF-12 and (3) the Caring Behaviors Inventory (CBI). Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed.ResultsContact with death, patients and their families, conflicts with supervisors and uncertainty about the therapeutic effect caused significantly higher stress among participants. A significant negative correlation was observed amidst total stress and the four dimensions of CBI. Certain stress factors were significant and independent predictors of each CBI dimension. Conflicts with co-workers was revealed as an independent predicting factor for affirmation of human presence, professional knowledge and skills and patient respectfulness dimensions, conflicts with doctors for respect for patient, while conflicts with supervisors and uncertainty concerning treatment dimensions were an independent predictor for positive connectedness. Finally, discrimination stress factor was revealed as an independent predictor of quality of life related to physical health, while stress resulting from conflicts with supervisors was independently associated with mental health.ConclusionOccupational stress affects nurses’ health-related quality of life negatively, while it can also be considered as an influence on patient outcomes.
Highlights
Nursing is perceived as a strenuous job
Most of the participants (54.9 %) were nursing assistants, as Greece is in the 32nd place of out of 34 OECD countries rank at the number of nurses
More stressful factors were those that were related to death and dying and those related with patient and family (m = 2.56; SD = 0.88) (Fig. 1)
Summary
Nursing is perceived as a strenuous job. Past research has documented that stress influences nurses’ health in association with quality of life, the relation between stress and caring behaviors remains relatively unexamined, especially in the Greek working environment, where it is the first time that this specific issue is being studied. The aim was to investigate and explore the correlation amidst occupational stress, caring behaviors and their quality of life in association to health. Nursing is perceived as a strenuous job with high and complicated demands. The high job demands and the combination of too much responsibility and too little authority have been identified as some of the primary sources of occupational stress amid nursing staff [3,4,5,6,7].
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