| Abstract [eng] |
Nurses often experience psychosocial stress, which can negatively affect the quality of work, productivity, health and lead to health-damaging behaviours. To prevent mental health problems among nurses, appropriate stress management is necessary. The aim of the study – to identify the associations between nurses' mental health and health-related behaviours: harmful habits, psychosocial stress and stress management. Tasks of the study: 1. To evaluate nurses' psychosocial stress. 2. To examine nurses' coping strategies. 3. To determine nurses' harmful habits. 4. To find out the relationship between nurses' psychosocial stress, coping techniques and harmful habits. Research methods. A quantitative study was conducted. An online survey was prepared using standardised questionnaires. The survey instrument consists of four structured parts: general questions; an adult lifestyle questionnaire; an improved four-factor stress coping questionnaire; and the L. Reeder Psychosocial Stress Scale. For statistical analysis of the data were used software packages Microsoft Office Excel 2016 and SPSS Statistic 23.0. Ethical requirements were observed during the study. Study results. 504 nurses participated in the study. The majority of them were women (93.8%). Age varied from 21 to 73 years (38.0 ± 13.1). Almost half (46.6%) of the respondents felt nervous tension and almost a quarter (21.8%) were stressed. The most frequently used method of coping with stress was problem solving (3.40 ± 0.70) and the least frequently used was emotional discharge (2.30 ± 0.70). The analysis of the frequency of smoking of tobacco products and e-cigarettes by nurses in the last 12 months and in the last 30 days showed that the most frequent smoking was non-smoking (58.3% and 60.1%, respectively and 64.5% and 70.1%, respectively). In the last 12 months, the most frequent consumption of alcoholic beverages by nurses in the survey was a few times a year or 2-3 times a month (31.2% and 26.7%, respectively), while almost a quarter of respondents said they did not use alcohol (22.6%). In the last 30 days, the majority of respondents drank alcohol a few times a year or 2-3 times a month (17.1% and 26.0% respectively), while the largest percentage did not drink alcohol at all (34.1%). The frequency of drug use by nurses showed that marijuana, ecstasy, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine, hallucinogenic mushrooms and alcohol in combination with sedatives were used relatively rarely. The results showed that there were positive very weak statistically significant relationships between psychosocial stress and the stress coping factors of emotional discharge (r = 0.322; p = <0.001) and avoidance (r = 0.092; p = 0.040), and a negative very weak statistically significant relationship between psychosocial stress and the problem solving factor of stress coping (r = -0.129; p = 0.004). Our statistical analysis also showed that smoking tobacco (r = 0.105; p = 0.019), alcohol (r = 0.124; p = 0.005) and LSD (r = 0.090; p = 0.044) were positively correlated in a very weak but statistically significant way with psychosocial stress. Conclusions. 1. Almost half of the nurses in the survey felt nervous tension and almost a quarter felt stressed. 2. Nurses ranked problem solving and social support as the most important ways of coping with stress, while emotional discharge was the least important. 3. The majority of nurses did not smoke tobacco products and electronic cigarettes. Nurses were most likely to have consumed alcoholic beverages a few times a year in the last 12 months, and most had not consumed alcohol in the last 30 days. The use of narcotic drugs was relatively rare. 4. Statistically significant associations were found between psychosocial stress and respective stress coping factors, tobacco smoking, alcohol and LSD use. |
