Stress and coping strategies among nurses working in psychiatric tertiary care hospital – A cross sectional study.

INTRODUCTION: Psychiatric service is a challenging task for nurses physically and psychologically. Psychiatric nurses are faced with factors such as long hours with patients, workplace control, environmental pressure. Nurses working in closed ward setup are associated with perceived additional stress due to high levels of patient aggression, violence, unpredictability and danger to themselves or others. Coping mechanisms are constantly changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific internal or external demands that are appraised as exceeding the resources of the person. They are categorized as problem-solving and emotionally-focused coping. The former is associated with techniques to minimize, redefine and solve external demands in order to reduce the effect of the stressor while the latter is associated with modifying the psychological reaction linked with stressors. Effective utilization of coping mechanisms interferes with the level of stress experienced. AIM: To study the workplace stress and coping strategies among nurses working in psychiatric tertiary care hospital. METHODOLOGY: The study was initiated after obtaining approval from Institutional Ethics Committee, Osmania Medical college, Hyderabad. The study was done in nurses working in psychiatric tertiary care hospital. The tools used were Devilliers, Carson and Leary(DCL) stress scale(30 item measure of occupational stress developed specifically for ward based mental health nurses) and Psych Nurse Methods of Coping questionnaire (assess the degree to which various coping strategies were utilized by psychiatric nurses, consists of 35 items). The data collected was analysed by SPSS software. RESULT: The results revealed that psychiatric nurses have significant work related stress and are exhibiting different coping strategies.