| Background: Nursing can be demanding and stressful with occupational stress posing a
serious threat to nurses and patient outcomes.
Aims/Objectives: To determine the prevalence of nurses’ occupational stress and its associated
risk factors.
Design: Cross-sectional survey design.
Methods: Nurses in 115 tertiary-level hospitals in 13 provinces in Iran were surveyed from
August 2016–December 2017. Demographic information and occupational stress were
assessed. 5422 distributed questionnaires were distributed with 2895 of returned surveys
analyzed. One-way ANOVA and multiple linear regression analyses identified risk factors
for occupational stress.
Results: Mean score for overall occupational stress was 3.48 indicating a stress level between
moderate and high, with 78.4% of respondents reporting that their job was stressful. Nurses
reported issues with shiftwork, staffing, pay, workplace discrimination, management, policy
and excessive workloads as sources of occupational stress. Risk factors in the multivariate
analysis for higher occupational stress were female gender (p = .002), being married (p
= .008), having lower educational levels (p < .001), increased work hours (p <.001), and
working in emergency (p = .025), general wards (p = .012) and teaching hospitals (p < .001).
Conclusions: The high prevalence of occupational stress amongst nurses in Iran demonstrates
the extent of the issue, with recent reforms not effectively addressing occupational stress. The
risk factors identified allow for more targeted interventions. |