Investigating Stress in Healthcare Nurses: A Comprehensive Report

This report examines the multifaceted issue of stress among nurses in healthcare settings, identifying key stressors such as heavy patient loads, high expectations, and the intersection of work and personal life. It highlights the prevalence of mental health issues like general stress, work-related fatigue, and burnout among nurses. The report discusses the impact of stress on nurses' performance, potentially leading to errors in medication and compromised patient care. Interventions such as the BREATHE program and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) are explored as effective strategies for stress management and improved coping mechanisms. The research includes a PICO question to assess the effectiveness of resilience-building interventions. The study concludes that implementing stress management techniques can significantly reduce stress levels and enhance nurses' ability to cope with workplace challenges, ultimately improving their overall well-being and patient outcomes. The findings are based on a review of literature from 2014-2019, focusing on articles published in English and sourced from databases like NCBI, Google Scholar, NMBA, and APA.

STRESS IN
HEALTHCARE NURSES
NAME OF THE STUDENT
NAME OF THE

STRESS IN
HEALTHCARE NURSES
Causes of stress in nurses
There are numerous factors that can pressurize
and create stress in nurses (Adriaenssens, Gucht
and Maes 2015). Some of the factors in
healthcare that cause stress are –
• Heavy patient loads
• High expectations from patients and
supervisors
• Work life and personal life intersects with
each other
Introduction
The workplace is one of most
significant resource and factor for work
related stress. Normally a person should
be faced with pressure to some degree
in order to boost their performance and
efficiency of life as it is beneficial and
necessary for them to encounter
difficulties in their lives. However,
when the pressure is intense, it
decreases the positive impact and turns
into negative factor that leads to human
errors and different psychological issues
(Khamisa, Oldenburg, Peltzer and Ilic
2015).
Statistics
According to a research, the
prevalence of mental health
due to work oriented stress in
nurses were:
general stress 22%, work-
related fatigue 17%, distress
12%, burnout 6%, post-
traumatic stress complaints 8%
(Cheung, Szeto, Lai and Ching
2018).
Discussion
Various studies have been conducted on the
assessment of level of stress in nurses.
According to a study, nurses often face conflict
in their nursing practice, that hamper their
professional role. They make several mistakes
such as giving wrong medications to a patient,
forgetting to transfer the handover details, and
many more (Μουστάκα & Κωνσταντινίδης
2014).
Stress can have a major effect on nurses and
their ability to manage tasks, particularly poor
choice-making, inability to concentrate,
apathy, diminished enthusiasm and panic, can
affect work performance and cause huge
mistakes.
Occupational stress and its impact on the
actions of nurses may cause mental problems
such as anxiety, depression, insomnia and
inadequacy. It can also significantly impact on
the physical health of nurses (Μουστάκα &
Κωνσταντινίδης 2014).
Interventions
Nurses can be helped to reduce their stress
by implementing the BREATHE program
(Hersch et al 2016). This program consist
of seven modules - Welcome and
Introduction, Assess Your Stress, Identify
Stressors, Manage Stress, Avoid Negative
PICO
Do nurses who build resilience and cope up with their
stress have less relapse than the nurses who fail to handle
their stress?
P – Nurses who face stress
I – Interventions (BREATHE program)
C – Comparison with mindfulness-based stress
reduction (MBSR)
O – Reduced stress in nurses and better coping at work
Mindfulness-based stress reduction
(MBSR)
An 8-week MBSR treatment can be successful in
reducing tension and improving nurses ' quality of
life and self-compassion. MBSR presents a well-
Conclusion or Outcome
After the nurses utilize both kinds of
stress management techniques, they
will have reduced amount of stress
and will be improve at coping up
with their work.
Inclusion criteria
For the following poster the PICO
question was developed based on the
different articles and journal
collected from the different online
search engines and databases –
NCBI, Google Scholar, NMBA, and
APA. The papers which have been
selected were published in the
English language, and the paper

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3
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