The nursing professional work environment is known to have a lot of job stress factors (stressors) that has continuously affected the job performance, health, physical and emotional well being of nurses. Understanding the impact of job stress on nurses’ job performance will help management, hospital policy makers and nurse administrators develop appropriate strategies and programmes that would improve nurse’s health and job performance.
However, stress can emanate from both an individual’s personal characteristics and/or individual’s occupational environment. Most studies report that personal characteristics such as age, sex and rank can influence stress.
Be it from whatever source, stress can have both positive and negative effects on nurses. Stress within one’s comfort zone can help one to perform under pressure, motivate one to do one’s best, even keep one safe when danger looms. However, when stress becomes overwhelming, it can damage one’s mood and relationships and lead to a host of physical and mental health problems. The incidence of stress due to overwork is growing. The United Nations realized the magnitude of this problem as it has labelled job related stress as 20th century disease. The body’s response to stress in individuals differs. Occupational stress among nurses results to various ailments such as ulcer, hypertension, stroke, heart attack, headache and cancer. Another response to stress among nurses is emotional exhaustion and this may lead to negative feelings towards those in their care. Stress can also to absenteeism, anxiety, frustration, anger and feelings of inadequacy, helplessness or powerlessness. All these can seriously affect nurses’ job performance. It is expedient therefore that job stressors in the nursing work environment, their effect on nurses; job be identified and possible remedies provided. This study therefore aims at determining the influence of personal characteristics, occupational stress on nurses’ job performance in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), Port Harcourt, and Rivers State, Nigeria.
METHOD
A descriptive research approach was used to investigate the influence of nurses’ personal characteristics and occupational stress on their job performances in University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), Port Harcourt, and Rivers State, Nigeria. A self administered questionnaire with content validity index of 0.79 and a test-retest reliability coefficient of 0.81 was administered to 222 selected through simple random sampling. Data was analyzed using simple percentages, independent t-test and ANOVA statistical tools
RESULTS
The results revealed that nurses’ are exposed to stress (91.0%); stressors were identified as workload (67.1%), inadequate motivation (64.9%), role conflict/ambiguity (54.5%) and poor working conditions (53.6%). Further more the result revealed that nurses job performance is significantly influenced (perhaps negatively) by the identified stressors.
Furthermore the result showed that nurses age exerts significant influence on their productivity in the presence of stress Cal f ratio = 4.44; P <0.05, while sex and rank of nurses had no significant influence on their performances.
EVALUATION
Occupational stress is very common among nurses. One strategy of alleviating this is by identification of the stressors, and strategize to ameliorate nursing activities. It is easy to generally assume that nurses by virtue of their training should build enough capacity to withstand stressful situations. The result of the study affirms a significant influence of age on nurses’ productivity as well as nurses being exposed to stressors such as workload, inadequate motivation, role conflict/ambiguity and poor working conditions. Older nurses should engage less in clinical work and do more of administration. Hospital Policies and good nursing leadership create conducive working environment for nurses, and translate to positive health, increase productivity, and quality nursing care.
CONCLUSION
The findings imply that nurses in UPTH experience occupational stress in terms of workload, conflicting roles, poor motivation and poor work condition, also that age exerts significant influence on nurses’ productivity, all these factors exerts negatively on their job performance and ultimately in the quality of nursing care. Work place policies that promote nurses autonomy, good nursing leadership and supervision, Implementation of WHO nurse -patient ratio of (1:4) and reduce conflicting roles can facilitate stress free work environment, translate to positive health, good job performance, and ultimately increase nurses productivity and quality nursing of care
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