Job stress and coping behaviors among nursing staff in the intensive care units of a regional hospital in the Eastern Taiwan

Objective: This study investigated job stress and coping behaviors among 103 intensive care unit (ICU) nurses at a regional hospital in eastern Taiwan. Materials and Methods: A structured questionnaire that included several open-ended questions was used to collect data. The response rate was 95.14%. Results: The average stress score of the ICU nursing staff was classified as medium stress. The largest stressor was 'patients needed medical attention but doctors could not come immediately'. The most frequently adopted coping behavior was 'telling myself not to let the same thing happen again'. Factor analysis was used to form stress and coping behavior subscales, and canonical correlation analysis was then used to examine the relationships among these subscales. The results indicate there were no significant relationships among these subscales. In addition, participants who were younger, less experienced, or the second child of the family had significantly greater job stress. Nurses who had previous working experience were more likely to employ avoidance coping behaviors. Furthermore, nurses who were single and had a professional registered nurse license tended to use compensatory coping more frequently than others. Conclusions: The result of this study may provide information useful for nursing administrators to design programs to assist ICU nursing staff to deal with job stress. Programs to help ICU nursing staff properly handle the difficulties generated by job pressures are needed to improve the quality of nursing care.