RESUMO
Objective@#To examine the relationship between recovery experience, occupational stress, and physiological health of nurses in a municipal grade A tertiary hospital.@*Methods@#A total of 296 in-service nurses from 7 municipal grade A tertiary hospitals were selected from October 2015 to February 2016. Individual characteristics of the subjects were collected using a self-made questionnaire. The recovery experience, occupational stress, and physiological health of the subjects were assessed based on the physiological health dimensions in the Chinese version of Recovery Experience Questionnaire (REQ-C) , Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) , and Quality of Work Life (QWL7-32) .@*Results@#The mean recovery experience score of nurses from the municipal grade A tertiary hospital was 45.04±7.72, and 51.35% of the nurses had satisfactory recovery experience. Occupational stress was identified in 81.76% of the nurses. Based on the four categories of occupational stress, 65 nurses were identified with high-strain jobs (21.95%) , 56 with relaxed (low-strain) jobs (18.92%) , 49 with passive jobs (16.55%) , and 126 with active jobs (42.57%) . In addition, the mean physiological health score of the nurses was 21.20±4.24. Physiological health was negatively correlated with occupational stress (r=-0.173, P<0.05) , but positively correlated with recovery experience (r=0.198, P<0.01) . Recovery experience was negatively correlated with occupational stress (r=-0.116, P<0.05) . Job demand was the major contributor to occupational stress, where subjects with high-demand active jobs had the poorest recovery experience (F=2.610, P<0.05) and physiological health (F=8.166, P<0.01) .@*Conclusion@#Job demand has a great impact on the occupational stress of nurses, where increased job demand can lead to stronger stress response, reduced recovery experience, and poorer physiological health.