Introduction: Nurses who are involved in the caring of COVID-19 patients, are at risk of mental distress. The present study was conducted with the purpose of demonstrating the relationship between stress, anxiety, depression and characteristics of nurses who provide care to COVID-19 patients.Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using the census method from May to June, 2020 on 224 clinical nurses who were working in hospitals affiliated with Babol University of Medical Sciences and were involved in caring for COVID-19 patients. The data collection instruments included the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale - 21 items (DASS-21) and the individual characteristic questionnaire. Bivariate and multivariate binary logistic regressions were computed to identify the associated factors. Result: The mean and the standard deviation for stress, anxiety and depression scores were 9.47±7.30, 9.29±7.51 and 8.84±7.22 respectively. 17.4% had stress, 54% had anxiety and 43% had a degree of depression. There were significant relationships between the nurses’ stress level and characteristics including age (OR =3.009, 95%CI 1.46–6.16, P=0.003), having children (OR=0.26, 95%CI 0.11-0.63, P=0.003), work experience(OR=4.50, 95% CI 2.17-9.96, P=0.000) and employment status(OR=0.39, 95% CI 0.16-0.95, P=0.04). Moreover, along with these characteristics, job satisfaction (OR =3.03, 95%CI 5.64–1.63, P=0.000), level of physical activities (OR =0.26, 95%CI 0.08–0.82, P=0.02), exercising (OR =2.27, 95%CI 1.31-3.90, P=0.003) and violence in the workplace (OR =0.27, 95%CI 0.12– 0.56, P=0.001) also had significant relationships with the nurses’ anxiety level. Furthermore, the relationships between the nurses’ level of depression and characteristics including age(OR =2.07, 95%CI 1.15 – 3.72, P=0.014), work experience (OR =21.79, 95%CI 1.04 – 3.10, P=0.03), job satisfaction (OR=3.03, 95%CI 1.63–5.64, P=0.000), exercising (OR =1.76, 95%CI 1.02–3.04, P=0.04), having chronic diseases (OR =0.35, 95%CI 0.15–0.81, P=0.014), violence in the workplace (OR =0.39, 95%CI 0.20–0.75, P=0.005) and sleep (OR =1.77, 95%CI 1.00–3.16, P=0.050) were significant.Conclusion: The authorities should consider a number of the individual characteristics of nurses including age, work experience, gender, marital status, having children, job satisfaction, sleep, violence in the workplace and history of chronic disease in their planning and provide psychological support for them.

Objective: Resilience and clinical competence are two important components of providing nursing care to patients. The goal was to determine the correlation between clinical competence and resilience in the nurses at Babol University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This descriptive and correlational study was conducted in 2019-20. A total of 424 nurses working in the intensive care units and general wards of six hospitals affiliated with Babol University of Medical Sciences were selected using the stratified sampling technique. Liou’s Nursing Clinical Competence Questionnaire was used to assess the clinical competence of the nurses, and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale was used to assess the nurses’ resilience. The descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, t student, and one-way ANOVA methods were used in data analysis. Results: The mean score on the seven dimensions of clinical competence was high (174.8624.19). The nurses had the highest mean scores on “clinical care” and “management and leadership” dimensions (4.7731.50, 4.728.61) in the order mentioned. They also had the lowest mean scores on the “mentoring and teaching” and “professional progress” dimensions in the order mentioned (3.5319.10, 3.4119.14). The meanstandard deviation of the nurses’ resilience score was 73.3612.66. The results of Pearson’s correlation test indicated a positive significant relationship between all clinical competence dimensions and nurses’ resilience (p<0.001, r=0.493). Conclusion: Given the strong relationship between resilience and clinical competence, nursing managers are recommended to carry out proper planning to improve the clinical competence and resilience of nurses.