Workload status and its relationship with job stress in nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic

Currently, the high prevalence of COVID-19 and increased workload in hospitals has posed a threat to the physical, mental, and emotional health of nurses. The present study was an attempt to investigate the workload and its relationship with job stress of nurses in COVID-19 reference hospitals in southern Iran.

This descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2021 on 431 nurses from COVID-19 reference hospitals in southern Iran. Data collection tools included the NASA workload and OSIPOW job stress standard questionnaires. Data were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficient in SPSS23 Software and at a significance level of 0.05

The mean age and work experience of the nurses participating in the study were 31.03±5.23 and 6.42±4.61, respectively. The mean scores of the workload and job stresses were 83.64 ± 17.24 (of 100) and 236.68 ± 16.54 (of 300), respectively. Mental load dimension (85.81 ±19.31, of 100) among workload dimensions and role workload dimension (43.62 ± 19.14, of 50) among job stress dimensions had the highest mean score. Thus, there was found a statistically significant relationship between workload and job stress of nurses (P= 0.04, r= 0.19).

Workload and job stress of the studied nurses were estimated at a high level. There was a significant positive correlation between these two variables, and increasing workload resulted in an increase in job stress.