Associations of Hospital Stress Dimensions and Ward of Employment in the Nurses of the Medical Centers Affiliated to Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Nurses are faced with numerous physical and psychological stressors in their workplace. Identification of stressors and their control in nurses could improve the quality of patient care. The present study aimed to identify the dimensions of occupational stress in the nurses employed in various wards of the hospitals affiliated to Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. This analytical, cross-sectional study was conducted on 324 nurses, who were selected via multistage cluster sampling. Initially, 12 healthcare centers were selected from three clusters of the center, west, and east of Guilan province, Iran. Based on the share of each healthcare center in the required sample size, the samples were randomly selected from various wards, including the emergency, internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, nursing office, critical care unit (CCU), intensive care unit (ICU), hemodialysis ward, and operating room. Data were collected using the hospital stress scale (HSS-35) consisting of 35 items and 11 subscales. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 19 using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The majority of the subjects (39.8%) were aged 31-40 years, female (96%), and married (77.2%) and had a BSc degree (93.2%). Regarding the mean score of general stress, the personnel of the emergency ward had the highest stress level (120.17 ± 16.13), while the ICU personnel had the lowest stress level (114.14 ± 19.01). However, the difference was not statistically significant (P>0.05). In terms of the severity of stress, the dimensions of ‘role ambiguity’ (3.58 ± 0.63) and ‘chemical stress’ (3.12 ± 1.26) represented the most and least significant stressors, respectively. According to the results, the highest hospital stress levels were observed in the staff of the emergency and pediatrics wards. Therefore, it is recommended that hospital managers pay special attention to the personnel of these wards through planning for the reduction of hospital stress and training the staff on the most effective coping strategies.