Real-time assessment of nurse work environment and stress.

Shively M, Rutledge T, Rose BA, Graham P, Long R, Stucky E, Weinger MB, Dresselhaus T. Real-time assessment of nurse work environment and stress. Journal for healthcare quality : official publication of the National Association for Healthcare Quality. 2011 Jan 1; 33(1):39-48.

Related HSR&D Project(s)

• IAF 06-085 – Operating Room Workload and Quality of Care

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

Ecological momentary assessment methods were used to examine real-time relationships between work environment factors and stress in a sample of 119 registered nurses (RNs) in acute and critical care settings of three hospitals. The RNs carried handheld computers for 1 week of work shifts and were randomly surveyed within 90-min intervals to self-report work activity, perceived workload, and stress. Mixed effects linear regression analyses were completed to predict the stress score in the sample. The number of patients assigned significantly predicted stress; the greater the number of assigned patients, the higher the reported stress (p < .01). Age, gender, adult versus pediatric facility type, familiarity with patients, and proportion of direct care tasks were not significant predictors of stress. Further research is needed to link work environment factors and stress with errors among nurses.