Assessing Job Stress and Satisfaction among Indian Nurses

Abstract

Though some amount of stress has been attributed to positively impact work success, but excess can create dissatisfaction and even lead to decrease in moral and high attrition. Understanding the major contributor to work, stress can bring huge changes in every aspect of work life. The objective of present work is to evaluate the sources of job stress and satisfaction among nurses of a super specialty hospital to suggest measures to increase satisfying aspects in work and decrease their stressful aspects of work. This descriptive study employing 115 staff nurses of a super specialty hospital, used a structured personal interview questionnaire consisting of 21 sources of stress and 19 sources of satisfaction. The nurses was asked to rate each item according to the extent by which it contributed to their stress or satisfaction as experienced in their jobs in the past few months. The stress label measured on a scale of 0 (not at all),1(a little), 2(quite a bit) to 3 (a lot). A global rating of stress and satisfaction was also obtained. Three top reasons of stress were found to be feeling poorly paid for the job (66%), having too great an overall volume of work (60%), and being involved with emotional distress of patients (52%). On the other hand, having good relationships with patients (86%), feeling of dealing well with relatives (83%), and being perceived to do the job well by patients (76%) was quoted by nurses to contribute to the satisfying aspect of their job. The nursing staff of the hospital was in moderate stress due to the prime stressors, so adequate measures should be taken to alleviate these stressors. This could be achieved through workload management, job redesign, and by offering occupational health education.

Keywords: Job life, job satisfaction, job stress, Nurses.