Impact of occupation stress of nurse on their job performance

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW
Case Study Format
Tile: Impact of occupation stress of nurse on their job performance
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1LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction:
Literature Review:
Occupational stress is typically defined as the circumstance under which an employee is
subjected to job associated factors that result in a modification in the physiological or
psychological condition, and deviates the people from their usual functioning. Time and again
it has been proved that occupational stress creates substantial damage on the mental and
physical health of the affected individual (Sarafis et al. 2016). Furthermore, increased levels of
occupational stress have also been found to greater rates of staff truancy and reduced levels
of their productivity. This calls for the need of exploring the impacts that the occupational
stress faced by nursing professionals create on their work performance.

2LITERATURE REVIEW
Parveen et al. (2017) has provided evidence for the fact that 41% of medical attendants were
subjected to outrageous work weight and stress at their workplaces and an estimated 59% of
them had to suffer comprehensive high apprehension cutting-edge the prior individual
month. The research was based on the routine acceptance of stress in the job of a healthcare
worker. Upon conduction of a correlational study that involved the use of the Perceived
Occupational Stress Scale, high response rate (78%) indicated the prevalence of occupational
stress amid the professionals, with 59% attendants belonging to the age group 25-30 years,
reporting momentous rates of stress. This was in accordance with the findings of Nabirye et
al. (2011) who aimed to investigate the levels of occupational stress, and its potential impact
on job performance and satisfaction, among hospital nurses. Conduction of a correlational
study revealed that there existed significant variations between the levels of occupational
stress, performance and job satisfaction, with older age group of nurses (50–60 years)
demonstrating maximum mean score (90.3), followed by 40–49 years with a mean of 84.9.
Furthermore, nurses belonging to the 20–29 year group manifested statistically greater job
gratification, in comparison to the 40-49 or 30–39 years groups.
On assessing the perception of nurses regarding occupational stress, three categories were
developed namely, “professional interest”, “nurses’ perception from the job stress”, and
“prioritizing career over family life”. Some of the cited reasons that were believed to create
an impact on the nurses were being in some alarming circumstance, absence of logistics and
experience, nurse shortage, objectionable relation amid colleagues, uninterested
professionals, personal problems, and organization irregularities. The findings suggested that
any of these risk factors had a potential of increasing occupational stress upon nurses, thus
affecting their life (Adib-Hajbaghery, Khamechian and Alavi 2012). Similar risk factors were
also identified by Sharma et al. (2014) who utilized a questionnaire for determining the
professional life related stress and allied socio-demographic variables among staff nurses. The
risk for occupational stress, accredited to satisfactory and poor attitude among doctors was 4
or 3 times more, in comparison to excellent doctor attitudes. Moreover, the level of stress
was directly proportional to department such as, ICU and emergency (43%). Owing to the fact
that an estimated 42% nurses suffered from stress due to lack of rest time, it can be stated
that occupational stress affected the mental health as well. Gandi et al. (2011) also
investigated the impact of stress and burnout on the job performance of nursing staff and
suggested lack of any sex differences in levels of burnout among Nigerian nursing staff, who
are subjected to average or high levels of emotive tiredness, medium stages of
depersonalization and increased levels of personal achievement. However, no significant
differences were observed in burnout effects on men and women, owing to similar working
environment in Nigeria. Thus, the study findings suggested that demonstration of empathy
towards patients often attracted several risk factors that were responsible for the onset of
occupational stress. Teng, Hsiao and Chou (2010) stated that time pressure amid nursing staff
resulted in a reduction in the patient perceived accountability and/or reliability, assurance
and responsiveness. However, there was a failure on the part of the nurses in developing any
momentous negative connotation between tangibles and empathy, as perceived by patients,
and time pressure.
Elfering, Semmer and Grebner (2006) also proposed findings that were similar to the previous
evidences. They confirmed incorrect and incomplete documentation as the primary stressful
event faced by nurses (40.3%), followed by patient care delivery delay (9.7%), medication
error (21%), and violent patients (9.7%). Although most research evidences have determined
the risk factors that contribute to occupational stress, and its effect on physical and mental
health, there is a gap in exploring the immediate impacts that are created on occupational
performance of the nursing staff. This calls for the need of conducting further investigation
on the topic.