Study of job stress status of nursing managers compared to nurses working in the wards

The role of nursing managers is crucial for the success of health care organizations. Due to the complexity of roles and workloads, they have considerable job stress. The majority of studies have examined the role of stress and coping with it in nursing staff. However, research on the topic of stress in nursing managers is rare. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the status of occupational stress between nursing managers and nurses working in the wards. This analytical cross-sectional study was conducted on 318 nursing staff (261 nurses, 34 head nurses, 16 supervisors and 7 matrons), including nursing managers and nurses working in health centers of Guilan province, who were selected using multistage cluster sampling. The research instrument was Hospital Occupational Stress Questionnaire (HSS-35). The questionnaire consists of 35 items and 11 subscales. Data were analyzed via descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS 19. The results showed that the majority of the samples in all groups had moderate stress. There was no statistically significant relationship between stress levels in different groups of managers and nurses working in wards (P = 0.74, F=0.41). It was remarkable that supervisors had moderate stress compared to other groups (87.5%). The severity of stress was higher in matrons (28.6%) than other groups. Despite the emphasis of various studies on the attention of managers of organizations to stress among nursing staff, the results of the study indicate that nursing managers have more stress. Therefore, there is a need for planning of stress reduction in all nursing groups (including managers and nurses working in the wards).