The Effect of Organizational Changes on Occupational Stress of Nurses Considering the Moderator Role of Trust in Head Nurses

One of the major problems that human societies are struggling with in the past few decades due to the gradual growth of modern life is the stress phenomenon. This phenomenon has become especially important and, by being globalized, it has increasingly affected the health of the workforce. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of organizational changes on occupational stress among nurses considering the moderator role of trust in head nurses. With regard to the aim of the study, this study is practical and regarding data collection it is a preliminary study and a branch of field studies which was done cross-sectional at eight Tehran University teaching hospitals in 2017. The statistical population of the study was all the nurses working in the teaching hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences (16 hospitals). 215 out of 230 nurses were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling method. The data collection tool was March Organizational Change Questionnaire (1981), Helicel and Slackome Job Stress Questionnaire (2010), and McCaffrey's Surveillance Trust Questionnaire (2010) whose validity and reliability were confirmed. In data analysis, Pearson Correlation test was used to examine the relationship between variables, structural equation modeling and Bootstrap test were used to measure the fit of the research model and hypotheses test using SPSS 22 and Amos22 software was used. The results showed that the research model has a good fit. If the trust in the head nurse is low, an organizational change with a coefficient of -0.60 at a 95% confidence level affects the nurses’ job stress, and if the trust in the head nurse is high, the effect of organizational change on nurses' job stress in the 95% confidence level is 0.77. Stress can, to a certain extent, have a positive impact on the performance of the individual in an organization, and if it exceeds a certain limit, it has a negative effect on the individual's performance in an organization. Therefore, in general, stress through trust leads to an organizational change.