Effect of Work Environment on Level of Work Stress and Burnout among Nurses in a Teaching Hospital in Nigeria

摘要

Nurses’ roles expose them to a lot of stress based upon the physical labour, exposure to human suffering, lengthy work hours, poor staffing, and interpersonal relationships that are central to the work they do. Nurses are expected to deliver humane, empathetic, culturally-sensitive and proficient care in working environments with limited resources and increasing responsibilities. Such imbalance between providing high quality care with limited resources leads to physical and mental stress. This stressful nature of nursing can ultimately lead to job dissatisfaction and burnout which among health care providers are important issues since they affect turnover rates, staff retention and ultimately the quality of patient care. A thoroughly validated self developed questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of 0.78 was used to explore the effect of work environment on the level of work stress and burnout among nurses. A purposive sampling technique was utilized to select 100 participants from the medical unit of the hospital. Three hypotheses were tested at a significant level of 0.05. Data were analyzed using ANOVA and Pearson’s Correlation. The study revealed that level of stress was higher among the staff nurses who had worked for only between 0 and 3 years, with mean stress score 46.0000. Findings further revealed that as the cadre rose, the nurses assumed that managerial roles were accountable for increased subordinates and oversee health related and administrative responsibilities and they experienced more stress. Also there is a significant relationship among work environment, stress and burnout among the nurses in the selected unit. In conclusion, though work conditions and environment are not favourable, there are job security and good interpersonal relationship among the nurses which cushion the stressful situations. It is therefore recommended that the management of the hospitals should provide a conducive work environment, providing necessary resources and adequate break periods to ensure staff welfare.