Stress And Coping Essay

Background:

Coping strategies play an important role in reduceing stress and consequently, increasing the general health of people. Given the stressful nature of the nursing profession and the importance of nurses ' health to provide patient care, conducting studies to identify stress and coping strategies are required. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of stress and coping strategies to predict the general health of nursing staff working in Guilan University of Medical Sciences’ health centers in 2016.

Materials and Methods: This analytical cross-sectional study carried out by participaton of 318 nursing staff working in health centers of Guilan University of Medical Sciences. Data were collected through multistage cluster

For example, the results of the study Memarbashy et al. (2011) showed that the relationship between task -oriented coping strategy and staff health was positive and significant (13). A study by Soleimannejad et al. (2012) also showed that there is a significant and inverse relation between coping styles and mental health (15). Generally, the identification of effective forms of coping as a mediating variable in relation of stress-disease is the forefront of research in this area (16) and regarding the importance of nurses ' health in providing care to patients, conducting research on stress and coping strategies is required.

Despite the recent research, review of the literature suggest that so far no study has been conducted to address the simultaneous role of stress and coping strategies in predicting the general health of nursing staff. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the role of stress and coping strategies in predicting the general health of nursing staff working in the Guilan University of Medical Sciences’ health centers. It is hoped that the results of this study could help the managers for planning of nursing health

The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was made in 1972 by Goldberg and Hillier and consists of 28 questions in four sub-scales (1- somatic symptoms, 2-anxiety and insomnia, 3- social dysfunction and 4- severe depression) (5 and 9). For grading, the 4-point Likert scale (as options “Not at all”, “No more than usual”, “Rather more than usual”, “Much more than usual”) was used , and each question was scored from zero to three (9). A higher score in each sub-scale indicates the subject 's undesirable condition. The recommended cut-off point to determine the general health status is 23 and above. Thus, the nurses with a general general health score of 23 or less are considered as healthy and those with score 24 or more are considered individuals with disorder in general health (6 and 9). Validity and reliability of this tool have been confirmed in various studies (19-17). For example, in the study of Noorbala et al. (2001), in order to validate the questionnaire in the population of 15 years and older in Tehran, the reliability of this questionnaire was carried out using test-retest method and the correlation coefficient at the confidence level of 99%, obtained 0.85 (18). In the study of Ebrahimi et al. (2007) that carried out in order to study the psychometric properties of the general health questionnaire in the