Occupational stress and associated risk factors among nurses: a cross-sectional study

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.