A Correlative Study Of Occupational Stress And Mental Health In Nurses

Objectives: Because nursing is a specific job, the nurses have been inoverload working state, longtime nervous work, the much confliction betweenpersons, and the distance between ideality and real life, which make thenurses be in high occupational stress state, so it can influence nurse's health,reduces the life quality and their job performance consequently. In my article,we study the occupational stress state of nurse and it's correlative factors,search the relationship betweens work stress and physical and mental healthof nurse, promulgate characteristics of nurse's occupational stress, andanalyze the correlation betweens the occupational stress and correlativefactors of nurse's occupational stress such as individual characteristic,personal relationship, coping style. And we hope to provide theory evidencefor reducing the physical and mental reactions of high occupational stress ofnurse and intervening in the negative influences to the nurse's work and lifeby the stress scientifically.Methods: 241 nurses in WuXi NO. 2 Hospital attend our investigation,and take 52 female teachers in WuXi medical school as the control group. Weused standard psychological assessable scale, which comprises the Job StressSurvey, the Symptom Checklist 90(SCL-90), the Coping Style Questionnaire,the Type A Behavior Pattern Scale and ecumenical population statisticalquestionnaire. We input the questionnaire results to, the compute and use the soft ware SPSS10.0 to, analyze statistically. Statistical methods we usedincludes description analysis, X~2 test,t test,F test and correlative analysis.Results: (1) The total score of stress scale of group nurse is 150.71±7.34, and 119.59±9.54 in group teacher. The scores of job stress scale ingroup nurse are much higher than the group teacher, and the nurse is in thehigh job stress level.(P＜0.05) (2)The mean of SCL-90 is 1.63±0.44 in groupnurse and 1.43±0.45 in group teacher, the mean in group nurse is muchhigher than the group teacher. (3)The total scores of Job Stress Survey and thescore of interpersonal relationship are remarkably correlative to the mean ofall SCL-90 symptom factors and the scores of factor such as body symptom,sensitivity of interpersonal relationship and dumps positively. (4)Therationalization score of coping style is 0.46±0.16 in group nurse and 0.42±0.19 in group teacher, the retreat score is 0.45±0.23 in group nurse and 0.41±0.18 in group teacher, the recourse score is 0.64±0.18 in group nurse and0.68±0.17 in group teacher, all of them have statistical significance. Itreveals that the nurses use more rationalization and retreat style than theteachers, and less recourse style than the teachers. (5)The total scores of jobstress and the scores of factor interpersonal relationship and factor jobinterests are remarkably correlative to the scores of retreat style positively.(6)The score of job stress of nurses with type-A behavior is higher than thenurse with non-A type behavior, and the score is 158.34±6.45 and 150.12±5.33 respectively and have statistical significance (P＜0.05). The total scoresof SCL-90 of nurses with type-A behavior is higher than the nurses withnon-A type behavior, and the score is 1.69±0.51 and 1.60±0.63 respectively and have statistical significance (P＜0.05).Conclusion: (1)The score of stress levet's scale of nurse's work is muchhigher than other female occupational groups, and nurses are the populationwith high stress level. (2) The score of work stress level's scale is correlativeto score of SCL-90 the positively. High stress level had influenced thephysical and mental health of nurse. (3) Different work stress level had beenin the nurses with different ages, educational levels, and departments. (4) Thestrained personal relations are the main cause of nursing occupationalstress. Using coping style can reduce the physical and mental reaction of nurseto the occupational stress. The nurses in emergency department, ICU, internalmedicine and 31-40 years old should be paid more attention in stressmanagement. (5)The scores of type A Behavior Pattern Scale and SCL-90 inthe nurses with type-A behavior are much higher than the nurses with non-Atype behavior. Type-A behavior and coping style are the influencing factorsthat produces physical and mental reactions to high occupational stress.