Assessment of job stress experienced by nurses working in oncology units

The nursing profession is one of the most stressful professions, as the oncology nursing staff faces many challenges in their daily work , Numerous nurses experience elevated levels of occupational tension at work. As a result of stressful workplaces and duties, stress influences the conduct of nurses on hospital wards. Occupational stress has a significant impact on the health and well-being of employees, as well as their quality of life and family life, job satisfaction, attrition, and absences from work. It is becoming increasingly difficult to disregard the factors that are plainly significant in work-related stress, such as lengthy working hours, the quality of relationships between hospital workers, inadequate supervision, a poor work environment, and a heavy burden. In addition, the physical environment, including temperature, illumination, and noise levels, has significant effects on the stress levels of hospital staff . In our cross-sectional study, which included (220) nurses working in oncology units, conducted in Dhi Qar and Najaf governorates in Iraq, socio-demographic questionnaire and a Perceived stress scale were used to gather the data. The statistical software package SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 25.0 was used to analyze the data. One-way analysis of variance was used for the comparison of more than two independent groups, independent t test was used for the difference between two independent groups, and Bonferroni was used to identify the group that made a difference when there was a difference. The data used were tested for conformity to normal distribution. Conformity to normal distribution can be examined with Q-Q Plot drawing . In addition, the normal distribution of the data used depends on the skewness and kurtosis values being between ±3 . When comparing quantitative data with normally distributed data, independent t tests were used to determine whether there was a difference between two independent groups, one-way analyses of variance were used to compare more than two independent groups, and Bonferroni was used to identify the group that was responsible for the difference. A high stress ratio was found, where the average perceived stress scale was 29.72, Among the most important factors causing stress was the inadequate nursing staff, mistakes during work, shortage of experience, and the non-positive relationship between nurses staff and the patient's relatives, in addition to the lack of training courses and incentives, and the lack of desire to work in the nursing profession in the first place.