The Study Of Job Stressors, Coping Style And Mental Health Among Nurses Working In Emergency Department

Objective: The study is to investigate the current status of the working pressure, coping style and the mental health of the emergency department nurses, as well as to understand the relations between the working pressure, coping style and mental health of the emergency department nurses.Method: Applying the Nurse Job Stressors Scale, Coping Style Questionnaire and the SCL-90 Questionnaire to investigate all the emergency department nurses that comes from four affiliated hospitals of some medical college. All the calculation and statistics were performed with the computer program, SPSS version 11.5.Results: 1.The stressors of the investigated nurses are divided into five factors and each mean mark of the five aspects are as follows: 2.92±0.44 at the aspect of nursing profession and work, 2.99±0.59 at time distribution and workload, 2.54±0.82 at the working environments and equipments, 2.94±0.51 at the patient nursing, and 2.55±0.56 at the management as well as human relations. The total mean score is 2.81±0.39.2. The coping style most used by emergency department nurses is problem solving, others are seeking help, retreat, illusion, rationalization as well as self-reproach.3. 35.8% of the nurses in emergency department got more marks than 160 at the SCL-90, among these nurses mentioned above, the proportion of total score of the SCL-90 between 160 and 199 is 22.5%, 5.8% between 200 and 239, and 7.5% over 240. Compared with the health adults of Chinese norm on the SCL-90 scale, the emergency department nurses got more marks in somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism, as well as the total score of SCL-90, significant difference is showed ( P < 0.05).4. The mental health of the emergency department nurses is highly correlated with the pressure felt by nurses, which means, the score of the SCL-90 scale of the emergency department nurses who felt more working pressure is more and accordingly whose mental health is worse. The Coping Style of problem solving had a negative correlation with the various symptom factors of SCL-90(except of the somatization). While the negative coping style of self-accusation, illusion, retreat and rationalization had a positive correlation with the various symptom factors and the total score of SCL-90.5. Analyzed by multiple linear stepwise regression, the working pressure and the coping style of self accusation as well as retreat entered into the formula.Conclusion: The emergency department Nurses'work-related stress is above moderate level,higher than that of medicine and surgery nurses. Mature coping style is mainly used by the emergency nurses. 35.8% of the emergency nurses got score over 160 in the SCL-90, whose mental health is not as good as the adult norm. The nurses who felt high working pressure had bad mental health. Problem solving and seeking help do good to the mental health of the nurses, while self-reproach, illusion, retreat as well as rationalization do bad to the mental health of the nurses. The factors which influenced the mental health status of emergency department nurses were mainly total mean score of working pressure, self-accusation and retreat, which were predictors of mental health of emergency department nurses.