Occupational Stress among Hospital Nurses: Comparison of Internal, Surgical, and Psychiatric Wards

Backgroundmanaging and coping with occupational stress as a recognized problem in the modern era, is vital andimportant. nursing is by nature a stressful occupation. continuous and long-term stress can result inphysical, psychological, and behavioral problems in nurses. we aimed to assess occupational stress innurses working in surgical, internal and psychiatric wards in teaching hospitals of shiraz, southerniran.methodsin this cross-sectional study, 180 nurses were selected among nurses working in surgical, internal andpsychiatric wards of 4 teaching hospitals affiliated to shiraz university of medical sciences. datawere collected using questionnaires containing health and safety executive (hse) and demographicinformation. statistical analysis was done using spss software. t test and analysis of variance (anova)were used as appropriated.resultsthe results of the study indicated that nurses of surgical and internal wards showed significantly higherlevel of occupational stress in most scales of occupational stress, except relationship, compared withnurses working in psychiatric wards. there was no significant correlation among scales of occupationalstress and age, marital status, work shifts and experience. however, we found a significant correlationwith some scales of occupational stress and sex and education level.conclusionthe findings suggest that occupational stress varies within different wards in the hospitals. occupationalstress should be prevented and controlled early and nurses should be supported in this regard.