Stress and Coping Styles: The Experience of Nursing Staff Working At Two Public Hospitals in Klang Valley, Malaysia

Although stress among nursing staff is common, adopting effective coping styles helps in minimizing the problem. The objectives of this study were to compare stress level among nursing staff working in the above disciplines, to identify common coping style used and to determine the relationship between stress and coping styles. This cross-sectional study involved 106 nursing staff who were universally sampled from psychiatric wards and emergency departments in two public hospitals in the Klang Valley. Self-rated questionnaires i.e. Stress Arousal Checklist (SACL) and Coping inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) were used to assess stress levels and coping styles respectively. There was insignificant difference in terms of stress level between the two nursing staffs. Stress dimension of SACL between the psychiatry (6.53 + 3.18, p=0.372) and emergency (6.02 + 2.67, p=0.372) nursing staffs were insignificant. Arousal dimension of SACL was also insignificant between psychiatry (8.60 + 1.70, p=0.372) and emergency (9.19 + 1.61, p=0.07) nursing staff. Task coping was the most commonly used coping styles among the psychiatry (55.36 + 9.85) and emergency (57.73 + 9.87) nursing staff in this study. Stress dimension of SACL showed weak significant relationship with task coping (r=-0.313, p=0.001) and emotion coping (r=0.292, p=0.001). Arousal dimension of SACL was also found to have weak significant relationship with task coping (r=0.271, p=0.003) and emotion coping (r=-0.251, p=0.005). While nursing was found to be a stressful profession, a significant relationship between stress and coping styles allows intervention to enable better adaptation to the stressful working environment.

Coping Styles and Clinical Factors in Relation to Quality of Life among Patients with Schizophrenia

This is a cross sectional study examining quality of life in relation to coping styles among patients with Schizophrenia (N=92) in remission, from June 2002 to December 2002. Remission state is determined by Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). The psychiatric diagnosis was made by treating psychiatrist using the Clinical Interview Schedule for the DSM-IV Diagnosis. They are subsequently asked to complete demographic and clinical data questionnaire and followed by 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36) of the Medical Outcome Study (MOS) for the assessment of quality of life and the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situation (CISS). The QOL in term of overall mental health among patients with schizophrenia was significantly and positively associated with ethnic group (p<0.05), employment status, type of antipsychotic (p<0.05) and number of admission (p<0.05). Being Chinese and employed are associated with better QOL in term of overall mental health. The commonly used coping style among patients with Schizophrenia is the distraction component of avoidance-oriented coping. The task-oriented coping was significantly and positively correlated with quality of life in term of mental component. There was a negative correlation between the emotion-oriented coping and all the domain of the quality of life. In conclusion, better quality of life is positively correlated with taskoriented coping and inversely related with emotion-oriented coping.