Occupational Stress and Mental Health in Nursing

Nursing is widely recognised as one of the most stressful healthcare professions. Occupational stress arises from high workloads, unpredictable work patterns, emotional labour and resource constraints. Nurses face prolonged exposure to suffering, life-threatening situations and interpersonal conflicts, which can precipitate anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances and burnout. Physiological markers such as dysregulated autonomic balance often accompany psychological distress. Persistent stress in nursing not only undermines individual well-being and professional efficacy but also increases turnover, compromises patient safety and exacerbates workforce shortages. Research has emphasised multifaceted approaches to mitigation, including individual resilience training, adaptive coping strategies and systemic interventions in staffing, shift allocation and workplace culture. Attention is shifting towards integrating digital tools, fostering self-efficacy and promoting evidence-based policies to safeguard mental health and sustain quality care across diverse clinical settings.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have illuminated the pivotal role of self-efficacy in moderating the impact of occupational stress on mental health among nurses. In a cross-sectional survey of tertiary hospital nurses, higher self-efficacy was associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety and social dysfunction for a given stress load. Occupational stress accounted for a significant proportion of variance in psychological distress, while self-efficacy buffered this relationship, highlighting its function as a key resilience factor. These findings advocate for targeted interventions to strengthen nurses’ confidence in managing work demands, such as skills training and participatory workload scheduling, to improve mental health outcomes.

Occupational Stress and Mental Health in Nursing publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in occupational stress and mental health in nursing across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Occupational stress: The psychological and physiological response when job demands exceed an individual’s coping resources.

Self-efficacy: An individual’s belief in their capacity to organise and execute actions to manage job demands effectively.

Problem-focused coping: Strategies aimed at directly addressing and resolving stressors through active problem solving.

Emotion-focused coping: Strategies aimed at regulating the emotional response to stress without directly altering the stressor.

References

1. The Effects of a Complex Interactive Multimodal Intervention on Personalized Stress Management Among Health Care Workers in China: Nonrandomized Controlled Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research (2024).
2. The moderating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between occupational stress and mental health issues among nurses. Scientific Reports (2024).
3. Work-related stress among nurses: a comparative cross-sectional study of two government hospitals in Ghana. BMC Public Health (2024).
4. The Mediation Roles of Coping Modalities on the Relationship Between Stress and Quality of Life Among Jordanian Nurses. The Scientific World JOURNAL (2024).