Stress management training program for stress reduction and coping improvement in public health nurses: A randomized controlled trial.

AIMS: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the stress management interventional program in reducing occupational stress and improving coping strategies among public health nurses. DESIGN: A double-blind, cluster-randomized approach was used as a randomization method for this study to evaluate the stress management interventional program. METHODS: A cluster-randomized controlled trial was carried out in eight comprehensive healthcare centres in Amman city, Jordan; four centres were randomly assigned to each experimental and control group. One hundred and seventy nurses were selected randomly from March 2019 - August 2019 and data were collected by using the Nursing Stress Scale & brief COPE over three data collection times. Both descriptive and inferential statistics (repeated measure ANOVA, Independent t test, and chi-squared) were used to answer the research questions of this study. RESULTS: The results showed that both the levels of occupational stress and coping strategies were significantly different between the two study groups over the three data collection points (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Based on the findings of this study, the stress management program is an effective non-invasive method that can be used to reduce stress levels and improve coping strategies for public health nurses. The implementation of stress management interventions in health care is likely to help nurses manage occupational stress in practice. IMPACT: Nurses suffer from a high level of occupational stress. In particular, approximately74% of nurses experience severe occupational stress, which can lead to many mental and physical disorders. However, nurses were less able to utilize the correct stress preventive strategies due to gaps in knowledge, skills, and awareness. This study contributed to the provision of empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the stress management program in reducing occupational stress and improving coping strategies among public health nurses. A stress management intervention program is a valuable non-invasive method that can be used by healthcare organizations to reduce stress levels and improve coping strategies for nurses in practice. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT03833986.

Stress management interventions for intensive and critical care nurses: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The level of occupational stress of nurses working in intensive and critical care units is high. Although many studies have assessed the effectiveness of stress management interventions among intensive and critical care nurses, the methodological quality of these studies remains unclear. PURPOSE: The purpose of this review was to summarize and appraise the methodological quality of primary studies on interventions for management of occupational stress among intensive and critical care nurses. METHODS: This review was reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify primary studies that assessed the effectiveness of interventions in managing occupational stress among intensive and critical care nurses using multiple databases from January 2009 to June 2019. RESULTS: Twelve studies published between 2011 and 2019 were eligible for inclusion. These included studies were classified as being of good or fair quality. The consensus across the included studies was that, compared with control condition, cognitive-behavioural skills training and mindfulness-based intervention were more effective in reducing occupational stress among intensive and critical care unit nurses. CONCLUSION: Further research should focus on methodologically strong studies by blinding the outcome assessors, using Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) design with an active control group, using standardized assessment tools, and reporting enough details about the stress management intervention-related adverse events. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This review demonstrates the need for high methodological quality studies to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of stress management interventions before it can be recommended for use in clinical practice to reduce stress in intensive and critical care unit nurses. In addition, attention should be given to developing research protocols that place more emphasis on interventions aimed at the organization level to address the growing problem of occupational stress among intensive and critical care nurses.