Stress and coping strategies among the nursing staff at a Emergency Care

Abstract

Work is a source of satisfaction for a lot of human necessities, but can also be a source of illness when it has stress risk factors and the worker does not have enough resources to protect himself from these risks. The aim of this study is to verify, among the nursing staff from the Emergency Care of a Health Center School, the occurrence and the sources of stress, the coping strategies used by the staff and the suggestions to reduce work stress. Descriptive study, transversal type, quali-quantitative approach. The data were collected at June and July – 2005. The sample constituted of 37 professionals from the nursing staff that worked in the institution and did the assigned consenting to participate in the study. For the data collection a semi-structured interview was used. For the quantitative data analysis descriptive statistics were used and for the qualitative data analyses the Content Analysis from Bardin was used. 97,4% of the professionals related feeling stressed; suggestions to reduce stress were related to organizational functioning,  to work overload and to relationships among staff and with clients. To cope with stress, avoiding strategies, direct and indirect confrontations were used. In the institution referred to, it is necessary to adopt health strategies to reduce stress among professionals.

Key words: Psychological stress; Nursing team; Nursing services.