Nurse Leader Initiatives to Decrease Job Stress on the Acute Care Unit

Abstract

Nurses are expected to provide high quality, safe healthcare in working environments where limited resources and increasing responsibilities are common. An imbalance between providing high quality care and managing or minimizing the assault of stressors can lead to increased job stress. Nurses on the Acute Care Unit (ACU) of a Midwestern, rural hospital utilized the Nursing Stress Scale (NSS) developed by Gray-Toft & Anderson (1981) to analyze aggregated mean data self-reported scores for job stressors before and after focused change initiatives. Nurses selected and led change initiatives for the top five scoring stressors that nurses concurred were modifiable using interprofessional interventions. Multidisciplinary teams collaborated to choose educational sessions, updated resources, and revised communication tools in an attempt to decrease job stress on the unit. The results of the second NSS when compared to the first survey overall demonstrated decreased stress mean scores in six of the seven subscales. The specific nurse led unit initiatives decreased self-reported job stress in four of the five areas. This project found encouraging results in decreasing job stress by implementing nurse led change initiates on the ACU.  

Keywords: nursing, job stress, leadership, change initiatives