Elqerenawi AY, Abdel Aziz Thabet and Vostanis P
Aim: This study aims were to find type of work stressors, used coping strategies, and resilience factors and relationship between stressors and coping strategies as mediating factors and resilience as outcome among Palestinian nurses working in Gaza Strip. Method: This study builds on existing evidence by considering exposure to work-related stressors, as well as on factors associated with later coping and resilience. The sample consisted of 275 randomly selected nurses from representative health services in Gaza, who completed the Nurse Stress Scale, The Connor-Davidson resilience scale, and Brief-COPE. Results: The most commonly reported job stressors were attending death of a patient, physician not being present when a patient dies, criticism by a supervisor, and fear of making a mistake while treating their patients. The mean score of nurses work stressors was 88.7. Nurses commonly used religious coping such as feeling comfort in religious beliefs, thinking what next steps they have to take, having strategy about what to do about situation what to do, and learn to live with situation as coping strategies with stress. While, use drugs to feel better and to get through was the least commonly used coping strategies. Nurses said that overcome the stressors and had resilience by believing that things happen for a reason, God is helping, and they were pride of their achievements. The results showed that fear of making a mistake in treating a patient was negatively predicting total coping strategies. While stressor such as a physician ordering what appears to be inappropriate treatment for a patient was positively predicted coping strategies. The results indicated that stressor such as physician not being present when a patient dies and too many non-nursing tasks required, such as clerical work was predicting resilience negatively. While stressors such as criticism by a physician and having not enough time to complete all of their nursing tasks were positively predicted resilience among nurse. Conclusions and recommendations: The results of this study highlight the need to empower the role of the nurse educators, managers and administrators to find ways to make nursing workplace more pleasant and less stressful, especially to the nurses in their initial years of work. The findings of the study will assist human resource managers of the current study setting to determine coping strategies that might help in reducing amount of stress experienced by nurses in their day to day challenging and demanding nursing roles.
