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Aim: To determine the levels of stress in oncology nurses and to identify their coping
mechanisms.
Background: It has been shown that nurses are bombarded by a variety of stressors
both in their personal lives and more particularly in their professional life. There is
also a range of studies that investigate their coping strategies. This study aims to
examine this in an Irish context and to compare them to other author's findings.
Setting A Dublin based hospital
Methods A quantitative study design was used to collect and analyse the data. A twopart
questionnaire was developed. The first part was derived from the literature and
the second part comprised of a stress predictor test, which was an adaptation of a
recognised scale.
Results: The questionnaire was administered to 98 nurses and fifty nurses (51.02%)
returned completed questionnaires. The results indicate that 66% of nurses (n=33)
scored over 200 on the Stress Predictor Test and that their level of awareness of that
stress was low. 76% (n=38) claimed that medical doctors were their greatest source of
stress. The most common (64%, n=32) coping mechanism used was drinking and
pubs, which are detrimental to the personal health of the nurse. The other prolific
coping mechanism was talking (56%, n=26) and counselling was reported as a coping
strategy.
Conclusion: The results point to the need to support nurses in relaxation skills, self
development and self-awareness, which is in line with other studies on the subject.
