Relationship between job characteristic and job stress in nurses of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences educational hospitals

Job stress is condition in work as part of role playing and need to adaptive responses; job stress is one of attention part of nursing profession and some of most important reasons of job stress are the characteristic of job for example task identity, skill variety, task significance, autonomy and feedback. The purpose of this study was to investigation relationship between job characteristic and job stress in nurses of KUMS educational hospitals. This study was descriptive correlated (cross-sectional), 297 participants in census method recruited from KUMS educational hospitals nurses. Demographic information, job diagnostics surveys (JDS) and job stress (Stimer) were measured by self-report questionnaire.The validity and reliability of these questionnaires approved in the earlier researches. As well as, internal consistency were 0.86 for Job diagnostics surveys and 0.82 for job stress by alpha Cronbach. Then information analyzed by statistical tests such as association linear-by-linear, 2 and ordinal regression by SPSS 16. 72.7% of participants were female, 59.6% married, 64.6% employed under 5 year, 33.3% work in critical wards and 87.9% were registered nurse. Motivational Potential Score (MPS) of 53.5% was low, job stress 64.6% was middle and the relation between MPS and job characteristics (skill variety (P<0.001), task identity (P<0.001), autonomy (P<0.02) and feedback (P<0.1)), age, sex and education level with job stress was statistically significant (P<0.05). Regression model of relational variables with job stress show that the autonomy was the most effective determinant on the job stress then task identity and feedback. This study showed relation between job characteristic and job stress in nurses so hospital managers must increase autonomy, identifying task identity and give proper feedbacks to redesign job and make nursing more challengeable, motivational and satisfying.