Analysis and counter measures of working stress related factors of nurses in intensive care unit: report from three top hospitals in Beijing / 中国中西医结合急救杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To analyze the working stress related factors of nurses in intensive care unit (ICU), and put forward the corresponding counter measures.Methods During January to March 2016, a questionnaire survey was conducted with a commonly used nurses working pressure source scale on 110 ICU nurses in three People's Liberation Army (PLA) 3A grade hospitals in Beijing. The questionnaire survey involved 35 items within 5 main categories, including nursing professional issues, nursing workload and time allocation, working environment and resources, special care for critical patients and inter-personnel relationships between the head of nurses and other nurses. The correlations between the ICU nursing working stress and alternative factors were analyzed.Results Ninety-six nurses said the job was stressful, and 88.5% of them expressed that the degree of pressure was more than medium. The correlation analysis showed that ICU nurse working stress was correlated with 29 items in the survey scale (allP < 0.05), of which the top 6 items the mostly closely related were the frequent working shift (r = 0.58,P = 0.000), low nursing social status (r = 0.54,P = 0.000), less promotion opportunities (r = 0.54,P = 0.000), less opportunities to pursue further study (r = 0.53, P = 0.000), nurse low salary (r = 0.52,P = 0.000) and excessive workload (r= 0.50,P = 0.000).Conclusions ICU nurses face a lot of pressure in their work, the management departments should pay more attention to them, and actively energetically improve the nurse system construction, raise ICU nurses' pride, enhance the quality of nurse care and promote the healthy development of nursing profession.