# Frequency of psychosocial stress and its relationship to safety attitude towards nurse’s performance at tertiary care hospitals

## TL;DR

This study found that psychosocial stress among nurses is linked to poor health and lower job satisfaction, teamwork, and management perception at tertiary hospitals in Karachi.

## Contribution

The study identifies specific factors like teamwork and job satisfaction that correlate with psychosocial stress in nurses.

## Key findings

- Most nurses reported poor health, with psychosocial stress significantly linked to teamwork, job satisfaction, and management perception.
- Gender, marital status, and institution were significantly associated with safety attitude scores.
- Stress recognition was found to be significantly related to nurses' health and safety attitudes.

## Abstract

Psychosocial stress has a detrimental effect on nurses’ work performance. A safe working environment is significant in providing nurses with safe and satisfactory care. The objective of study was to assess the frequency of psychosocial stress of nurses and determine the relationship between psychosocial stress of nurses and safety attitude towards nurses’ performances at Tertiary Care Hospital, Karachi.

Analytical cross-sectional study was conducted at Dr. Ruth KM Pfau Civil Hospital, Karachi, and Dow University Hospital Karachi for six months, from December 2020 to May 2021.

A total 260 participants were approached by a non-probability purposive sampling. Pearson’s correlation was used to establish the relationship between the psychosocial stress of nurses and different parameters of their safety attitude. The Chi-square test was applied for the association between demographic factors of nurses with their psychosocial stress levels. A p-value of ≤0.05 was considered as significant.

The majority of nurses, 180 (69.2%), described poor health, while 54 (20.8%) had good health, and only 10% (26) of nurses reported their best health status. Three parameters were negatively correlated and statistically significant with psychosocial stress, namely: teamwork (r-0.13<0.002), job satisfaction (r-0.15<0.028), and perception of management (r-0.34<0.000). The result of the study indicated that gender (P-value<0.000), marital status (P-value<0.0037), and institution (P-value <0.005) were significantly associated with safety attitude score.

Most of the nurses had poor health, which was significantly related to teamwork, job satisfaction and perception of management, and stress recognition.