Stress management training program for stress reduction and coping improvement in public health nurses: a randomized controlled trial

Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the stress management interventional program in reducing occupational stress and improving coping strategies among public health nurses. Design: A double-blind, cluster-randomized approach was used as a randomization method for this study to evaluate the stress management interventional program. Methods: A cluster-randomized controlled trial was carried out in eight comprehensive healthcare centres in Amman city, Jordan; four centres were randomly assigned to each experimental and control group. One hundred and seventy nurses were selected randomly from March 2019 - August 2019 and data were collected by using the Nursing Stress Scale & brief COPE over three data collection times. Both descriptive and inferential statistics (repeated measure ANOVA, Independent t test, and chi-squared) were used to answer the research questions of this study. Results: The results showed that both the levels of occupational stress and coping strategies were significantly different between the two study groups over the three data collection points (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, the stress management program is an effective non-invasive method that can be used to reduce stress levels and improve coping strategies for public health nurses. The implementation of stress management interventions in health care is likely to help nurses manage occupational stress in practice. Impact: Nurses suffer from a high level of occupational stress. In particular, approximately74% of nurses experience severe occupational stress, which can lead to many mental and physical disorders. However, nurses were less able to utilize the correct stress preventive strategies due to gaps in knowledge, skills, and awareness. This study contributed to the provision of empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the stress management program in reducing occupational stress and improving coping strategies among public health nurses. A stress management intervention program is a valuable non-invasive method that can be used by healthcare organizations to reduce stress levels and improve coping strategies for nurses in practice.

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