Effect of Stress Coping Skills Training on the Job Stress of Iranian Nurses: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Nurses are more susceptible to stress due because of their career nature.  However, stress management is one of the components of health education. 

The aim of the present systematic review and meta-analysis was to examine the effect of teaching the stress coping skills on occupational stress in Iranian nurses.

The current study was systematic review and meta-analysis performed until the early of April 2019. By searching phrases of “job stress, stress, nursing and nurse” in Persian databases such as SID, Mag Iran, Iran Medex, Iran Doc, and English equivalents including Scopus, Pub med, Web-of-science, Proquest, and Science direct, all relevant studies were extracted by using Boolean "AND" and "OR". Google Scholar search engine was searched in both Persian and English. The methodological quality of the papers was examined using the Cochrane-risk-of-bias tool.  Data were analyzed by the random effects model and heterogeneity by I2 index using STATA 11.

Of a total of 1069 extracted studies, six studies have investigated the effect of stress coping skill training on occupational stress in nurses. The joint effect size (-1.77) indicated a reduction in the effect of interventions on stress, but the heterogeneity was very high (I2 = 3.85%). The results of meta-regression showed that none of the variables in the study such as publication year, sample size, and male to female ratio were heterogeneous.  To control heterogeneity, it reached zero (I2 = 0/00%) by the elimination of cast-away studies and the results showed that the interventions significantly reduced stress (Effect size: -0.57 (-0.81 -0.34) P< 0.001).

Regarding the effect of training the stress coping skills on mitigating stressin nurses’ job it is recommended to implement interventional educations to reduce the stress of nurses.