The Study on the Relationships between Job Stress and Coping Strategies of Nursing Managers among Community Hospitals

• Main Authors: Chao-Fen Lo, 駱昭芬
• Other Authors: Chen-Chung Ma
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/25crg3

碩士 === 義守大學 === 醫務管理學系 === 103 === Background and Purpose: Nursing managers play a complicated role in community hospitals. Facing external work requirements and internal self-expectations, nursing managers are under considerable job stress. The job stress of nursing managers demands attention, and appropriate coping strategies are required to help individuals or organizations cope with hospital management crises effectively. However, the factors resulting in job stress for hospital nursing managers are extremely complex. In addition, Taiwan has a shortage of nurses, and the working environment at hospitals is poor,thuscommunity hospitals are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit new nursing staff. This further highlights the incredible stress that nursing managers bear. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the job stress faced by community hospital nursing managers and their coping strategies as well as which factors are contained within these elements. Materials and Methods:We adopted a survey methodology for this study. First, ten different sources of job stress and eight coping strategy factors for nurses were collected from the literature. We used a validated scale to craft the draft questionnaire. Three experts (two practitioners and one scholar) reviewed and revised the questionnaire to enhance its content validity. We then performed a small-sample pretest using the revised questionnaire before revising it further to create the final questionnaire. This study received ethics approval from an institutional review board of a medical center in southern Taiwan (Number: 10403-007). The sample for this study comprised the nursing managers of 46 community hospitals in Kaohsiung City, Pingtung County, and Pingtung City. A total of 302 questionnaires were issued and 231 valid questionnaires were recovered for a valid response rate of 76.5%. We used confirmatory factor analysis and canonical correlation analysis for analyzing the collected data. The results indicated that the reliability of each factor met the Cronbach standard of α > 0.7. Each of the individual items had cross loading higher than 0.7 criteria. Confirmatory factor analysis also revealed that our questionnaire had sufficient construct validity (the average variance extracted of each factor was higher than 0.7 and the square roots of the average variance extracted of each factor were also greater than the correlation coefficients between factors). Results and Conclusions:The results of canonical correlation analysis indicate that the canonical correlation coefficient of the canonical function (the proportion of redundancy was 59.08%) was 0.73 and Wilk’s lambda = 0.17 (p < 0.001). The significance of the factors of sources of job stress and coping strategies all had absolute canonical correlation loadings higher than the judgment criteria of 0.45. Among the sources of job stress, the significant factors in order of importance were inadequate emotional preparation, death and dying, workload, patients and families, nursing manpower shortages, problems with peer support, discrimination, conflict with physicians, and problems with supervisors. Among coping strategies, the significant factors in order of importance were self-reliant, fatalistic, confrontational,supportive, optimistic, palliative, and emotive. The results of this study reflect that the job stress faced by community hospital nursing managers originates more from their inner feelings of emotional entanglement and work conflicts than it does from the physical stress of the effort demanded by workloads. Among the coping strategies, self-reliance came out on top, showing the ascetic courage of nursing managers when facing traditional hospital systems. The psychological and spiritual care for nursing managers demands attention. They also require assistance when facing frustration and failure. When facing job stress, nursing managers must have strong coping strategies to promote personal growth and to lead their nursing colleagues in stepping forward on the grand path of the nursing profession.