Occupational stress of professional nurses in South Africa

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify occupational stressors for professional nurses in South Africa. A cross-sectional survey design was used. A stratified random sample of professional nurses (n = 818; females = 97%) in hospitals in South Africa was used. The Nursing Stress Indicator (NSI) was administrated together with a biographical questionnaire. Three internally consistent stress factors, namely lack of organisational support, job demands and nursing-specific demands, were extracted. The most severe stressors for professional nurses included staff shortages, inadequate salaries and excessive administrative duties. Work overload, fellow workers not doing their job, health risks posed by contact with patients and demands of patients were also identified as stressors. Stress was associated with specific factors, including age, position (rank), care unit, and work experience.

Emotional well‐being and work engagement of nurses who moonlight (dual employment) in private hospitals

“…This is the first cross-sectional study on emotional well-being and work engagement of nurses who moonlight in private hospitals in South Africa. Although there is an abundance of research on emotional well-being of nurses (Van der Colff & Rothmann, 2014;Khamisa et al, 2015;Khunou, & Davhana-Maselesele, M., 2016;Makhado & Davhana-Maselesele, 2016;Mashego et al, 2016;Dlamini & Visser, 2017;Roomaney, Steenkamp, & Kagee, 2017;Wentzel & Brysiewicz, 2018) in South Africa, there are no studies specifically focusing on emotional well-being of nurses who moonlight. We defined well-being by investigating levels of general health, mental health, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue.…”

“…African studies, which reported higher levels of emotional exhaustion among nurses (Makhado & Davhana-Maselesele, 2016;Van der Colff & Rothmann, 2014). More specifically high levels of emotional exhaustion were found: (a) among 34.6% of registered nurses in the private, public, hospital, community, psychiatric and management sectors of seven provinces of South Africa (Van der Colff & Rothmann, 2014) and (b) among 53% of nurses caring for people living with HIV/AIDS at a regional hospital (Makhado & Davhana-Maselesele, 2016). Given the low scores on emotional exhaustion (ie, low risk for burnout), we…”

“…Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from.71 to.90 were reported (Maslach et al, 1996). Reliability and validity were also found acceptable in South African studies (Coetzee et al, 2013;Van der Colff & Rothmann, 2014). Scoring is as follows: emotional exhaustion low score ≤18, average score 19 to 26, high score ≥27; depersonalizationlow score ≤5, average score 6 to 9, high score ≥10; and personal accomplishmentlow score ≥40, average score 39 to 40, high score ≤33 (Maslach et al, 1996).…”

Emotional Labour and Wellbeing: What Protects Nurses?

“…Emotion-focused coping aims to reduce the intensity of emotions caused by a stressful situation, whereby problem-focused coping attempts to change the problematic situation itself. Although there is evidence that nurses frequently utilise emotion-focused coping strategies to manage work-related stress [50], the implications for wellbeing are mixed and negative, and positive effects on mental health have been reported [51,52,53,54]. …”

“…There is evidence that emotional expression can help people process their emotional reactions, facilitate emotional adjustment, and enhance mental health and life satisfaction [57,58]. There is also evidence that nurses who use emotional expressive coping styles are at lower risk of emotional exhaustion [54]. Emotional venting may help nurses manage the emotional demands of their work for several reasons.…”