The Emotional Labour and Mental Health among Nurses Working with Chronic Disease Patients

Abstract

The mental issues that have been identified to be of great concern to the nurses include occupational stress and depression, especially in the nurses working with long-term patients that have chronic diseases with prolonged emotional, physical, and psychological strains. This paper was intended to measure the occupational stress, stress related to sleep, coping strategies, organizational support, and depression and to determine the correlation between these variables. The quantitative cross-sectional design was used, and 210 nurses in chronic care units were included in the study sample through a structured self-administered questionnaire. The data analysis was performed by descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation analysis in SPSS. The findings obtained showed that there were significant positive relationships between sleep-related stress and depression (r =.469, p <.01) and occupational stress and depression (r =.266, p <.01), which implies that the higher is the level of stress the higher depressive symptoms. The results have shown that work and sleep stress are the key determinants of depression among nurses who deal with patients with chronic diseases. The research describes that organizational interventions, better work conditions, and mental health support programs are needed to decrease stress and improve the psychological well-being of the nurses who would deal with patients better.