Literature Review On Stress In Nursing

The purpose of this literature review is to analyse studies and discuss the factors which lead to an increase of stress in nursing. Nursing has many different areas such as the general ward setting, acute psychiatric, correctional, community settings, elderly care to the acute psychiatric setting, however no matter how different these areas are they all still are care giving professions and are subject to similar stressors. The main focus was identifying relevant literature that presents evidence of stress inducing factors or situations within the nursing profession and the impact that stress may have on job performance and satisfaction.

McGrath et al. (1989) conducted a study focusing on occupational stress in Northern Ireland the study included

These countries were chosen to see identify factors of occupational stress that could differ from country to country. The study included 2144 nurses from 19 different hospitals, including Hungry, Israel, Italy, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA). Out of the 2144 questionnaires sent to the nursing staff 1442 or 68.2% responded. The questionnaire simply stated “what causes you the most stress or anxiety on your job?” the word stress was included in the title as it allowed nurses to individually interpret stress and tailor the question to them which made this qualitative study more personal but also gave the participant more freedom to explain what stress meant to them personally as every individual has different coping levels and thus reacts differently to stressors which gave very qualitative answers to the study so the phrasing of the question was vey applicable and important in producing intimate answers. The three main causes of stress after the analysis of the results were quantitative workload, leadership and lack of resources’ with autonomy falling under the heading of leadership in some countries but not in

The study was qualitative and included 8 qualified staff who worked in a mental health National Health Service (NHS) trust in London. The format selected for the study was semi-structured interviews recorded by transcripts and analysed using a phenomenological analysis framework which aims to offer insight into how a person reacts and makes sense of a phenomenon. From the interviews it was found that nurses in the acute ward setting faced a number of occupational stressors including pressure from managers and other staff members, workload, bed shortages and violent behaviour from some service users. When reading this study it was quite evident that some of the participants felt a sense of hopelessness due to poor working conditions. Many of the nurses included in the study commented on the poor work environment and being unable to prevent their work from affecting their life at