Occupational Stress, Anxiety and Coping Strategies among Nurses of Public and Private Hospitals.

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between occupational stress and anxiety among nurses of public and private sector hospitals of Islamabad and to identify the coping strategies used by them. For this purpose, Extended Nursing Stress Scale (Gray-Toft& Anderson, 1981), Anxiety Sub-scale of Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (Lovibond&Lovibond, 1995) and Brief COPE Inventory (Carver, 1997) were used. The study was divided into two phases: In phase 1, a pilot study was conducted to ensure psychometric screening of the scales, to ensure understandability and appropriateness of items for the scales. Given the satisfactory results of the pilot study, phase 2 (main study) was conducted on a sample of 200 nurses from Islamabad (104 from a public hospital and 96 from a private hospital) with age ranging from 20 to 30 (M = 2.89, SD = .42). The results showed that the occupational stress and anxiety among nurses are positively correlated. Regression analysis was run on the sub-scale scores of ENSS to identify the work-related predictors for nurses in determining their anxiety and the results showed that problems with co-workers is the significantly strongest predictor of anxiety among nurses. Married nurses scored higher on occupational stress as compared to unman"ied nurses, nurses of public hospitalreported higher level of stress and anxiety as compared to the nurses fromprivate hospital. Respondents' scores on study variables were compared on the demographic variable of family system and it was found that nurses from joint family system reported higher levels of occupational stress as compared to nurses from nuclear families on ENSS and higher levels on the coping strategies -of self-distraction and denial on Brief Cope. Nurses of both hospital sectorsdid not differ in using coping strategies used to cope up with anxiety and stress except for the sub-scale score on substance use where nurses from the private sector scored significantly higher as compared to nurses from the public sector. Potential implications of this study have also been discussed.