Experienced stress among nursing teams in primary health care

Abstract

This research looks to describe experienced stress in nursing teams working in primary health care. Recent changes and increased demands in primary health care may result in highly stressed teams, which have a subsequent impact on nursing care. Nurses’ experienced stress has previously been identified at individual, team, organizational and cultural levels. Team related factors associated with stress have been identified as team climate, supportive colleagues and work environment. A descriptive study was conducted among nurses from 29 teams in 18 different primary health care centres, located in one Lithuanian county. The Expanded Nursing Stress Scale (ENSS) was used. A total of 187 nurses completed the questionnaire. The stress experienced by nurses depends on the team. The study results reveal both individual and team level stress. The effect of the team size is moderate, but the background factors of the teams had little association with the sub-categories of stress. Workload tended to cause more stress in larger teams. At the nurses’ team level, a strong positive correlation was found between all of the stress subcategory areas investigated, except for that of “discrimination”. Different teams followed different stress profiles, but based on their common features, various clusters were identified which should be noticed by management.