Sources of occupational stress and coping strategies among nurses who are working in Admission and Emergency Department in Hospitals affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences,Iran

Occupational stress is a recognized problem in health care workers. Nursing has been identified as an occupation that has high levels of stress. This study aimed to investigate the sources of job stress and the adopted coping strategies of nurses who were working in Accident and emergency department. In this descriptive survey ninety emergency ward nurses from three large teaching hospitals in Shiraz City, Iran, were involved in the study. The data was collected through a self-administered questionnaire to identify the sources of job stress and nurse’s profile and Lazarous standard questionnaires to determine the types of coping strategies. The greatest proportion of respondents was women (86.7%), range 23-50 years, had less than 5 years of experience (56.7%). The following stressors were identified: problem related to physical environment, work load, dealing with patients or their relatives and handling their anger, being exposed to health and safety hazards, lack of support by nursing administrators, a physician not being present in a medical emergency and lack of equipment. The most common strategy used by nurses was self-controlling and Positive Reappraisal and the strategy least used were accepting responsibility. In this study large proportion of nurses used an emotion-focused strategy but Problem-focused approaches were generally less used. It was concluded that the coping scales, positive reappraisal and self-controlling are extremely important in emergency department nurses.