Abstract

Pappa Despoina*, Alikari Victoria and Dafogianni Chrisoula

ABSTRACT

Background: Several factors such as the circular shifts, the increasingly heavy load of work, the hard working conditions, as well as the severe nature of the patient's health condition contribute to nurses' stress in Intensive Care Unit. Aim: To identify particular circumstances in Intensive Care Units which increase nurses’ level of stress. Methods: Nurses (N= 158) from public and private hospitals of Athens participated by filling out the Expanded Nurse Stress Scale (ENSS) which describes 57 frequent encountered situations in the hospital that cause stress to the nursing staff. The induction of the results was made by using the statistical program IBM SPSS Statistics version 20. Results: A big percentage of the nursing staff is influenced at a huge degree by the critique either from a doctor or from someone superior. Also, it is accepted by one third of the research population that the lack of nursing staff influences negative the function of this hospital department. Most of the nursing staff get disappointed by the unfavorable outcome of their patients and one third of them are influenced by the fear of a possible error to the treatment followed. Additionally, the medical instruction which couldn’t be in correspondence with the treatment, contributes to nurses’ stress. Finally, professional experience corresponds statistically significant with the possibility of error during the nursing practice (p = 0,293). Conclusion: There are more than enough factors which influence an ICU nurse. Each organization (either hospital or private clinic) should take care for the possibilities and endurance of its nursing staff and assess efficiently and constantly the quality of its practice.