Coping Strategies Used by Staff Nurses Working in Emergency and General Wards of SKIMS Hospital: A Comparative Study

Author(s):

Firdousa Jan, Santosh kour and Manzoor Ahmad Para

Nursing is an occupation subject to have high level of stress. Increased workload, growing occupational stress and inability to cope with it, lack of social and professional support are major concerns in nursing. Staff nurses use different coping strategies in different situations. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to identify the coping strategies used by staff nurses and to find its association with selected demographic variables. The study population consisted of 120 staff nurses working in emergency and general wards of SKIMS Hospital Soura Srinagar. A comparative descriptive design was used to conduct the study. Probability simple random sampling technique was used to select samples. Modified Ways of coping questionnaire (WOCQ) was used to identify coping strategies among staff nurses. Results: In Problem focused coping strategies (PFC), Planful problem -solving (M=10.35, SD=3.161 in emergency wards), (M=10.63, SD= in general wards ) Coping strategy was most frequently used by staff nurses whereas less frequently endorsed coping strategy was confronting coping (M=7.70, SD= 3.859 in emergency wards), (M= 6.25 ,SD=3.09 in general wards). Hence no significant difference was found in PFC in both areas as p- value (0.98>0.05). There was Significant difference in EFC as two types of coping strategies which are less endorsed by emergency ward nurses are Accepting responsibility(M=5.20) and escape- avoidance (M=5.12) while only one coping strategies that is accepting responsibility was least used by general ward nurses . There was no significant association between coping strategies with demographic variables of the staff nurses working in general wards. However, in emergency wards there was significant association of demographic variable of working area with emotion- focused coping strategies.