(Abstract)
Stress is regarded as an unavoidable part of human life in modern society and a main cause of almost every disease. It is pointed out that nurses working under more serious situations than those in other professions are greatly stressed...
(Abstract)
Stress is regarded as an unavoidable part of human life in modern society and a main cause of almost every disease. It is pointed out that nurses working under more serious situations than those in other professions are greatly stressed and their problems caused by stress assume a serious complexion. The heavy stress in nursing profession deteriorates not only individual health condition but also job efficiency. So, proper steps are needed in the management of stress.
This study aims to clarify the stress factors of clinical nurses, analyze the moderated effect of self-efficacy in stress or stress relationship, and suggest some active and positive measures for alleviation of stress. The research hypotheses formed for this study follow: the relations of the factors and the level of job stress are in constant proportion; the sense of self-efficacy and the level of job stress are in the negative relation; the sense of self-efficacy plays a role of a regulation variable in the relations between stress factors and its level.
The respondents of the survey were the nurses working for a university hospital. The results of analysis on the data reveal the fifty variables of stress factors were extracted as nine factors. Each factor was named superior conflict factor(F1), unfair treatment factor(F2), communication conflict factor(F3), knowledge conflict factor(F4), colleague conflict factor(F5), medical treatment limitation factor(F6), professionalism limitation factor(F7), over-work load factor(F8), and extra activity factor(F9). It is shown that superior conflict factor, unfair treatment factor, and knowledge conflict factor out of the nine factors are in the positive proportion to the stress levels. For the verification about the moderated effect of self-efficacy in the relationship between stressor and stress level, a regression analysis was carried out in which stress level was put as a dependent variable and independent variable was the interaction termof self efficacy and the stressor. The results show that the interaction term was not significant statistically and the difference of R2 between the regression model with an interaction term and the regression model without it was also insignificant. However, the relationship between self-efficacy and the stress was negative.
The nurses with the sense of high self-efficacy consider some difficult tasks as a challenge, not as a threat. With these positive attitudes they encourage themselves to be engaged in management of any difficult duties. Accordingly, they can recognize the stress factors and control their effects better than those nurses without the sense of self-efficacy. It is needed that the board of hospital directors and the nurse managers should take various measures to improve the self-efficacy of nurses as well as some steps to relieve stress factors from them.