Coping Strategies with Job Stress of Nurses Working in Intensive Care Units

People's jobs are one of the most important sources of stress. There is more stress in medical jobs. Nurses, especially nurses in intensive care units, are faced with many occupational stressors that use many strategies to cope with them. Identifying the type and extent of coping strategies used by nurses in the face of occupational stress can be useful in their educational planning in order to employ appropriate coping strategies. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine coping strategies with job stress of nurses working in intensive care units of hospitals in Tehran.

This research is a descriptive-cross-sectional study that was conducted in 2019 in Tehran. In this study, 5 university hospitals that had intensive care units were selected by cluster random sampling and then all nurses working in special wards that were consciously willing to participate in the research and were eligible were examined by census and 235 people. Data were collected using demographic questionnaires and countermeasures (Lazarus-Folkman) and analyzed.

The results showed that the majority of nurses (75.3%) had poor coping strategies (65.81±14.34). Nurses mostly used problem-centered coping strategies (47.72±11.13). Positive reappraisal subscale (51.55±14.80) of problem-centered coping strategies and restraint subscale (45.79±12.92) of emotion-focused coping strategies were used more frequently by nurses. There was a statistically significant difference between demographic characteristics and age of coping strategies (P=0.037).

According to the results of the present study, it seems necessary to educate nurses about the optimal use of coping strategies.