Prevalence of psychological distress and perceived stress among nursing staff in a tertiary care center, Bengaluru

Abstract

Background: Nurses among the health care providers play a vital role in the success of the health care system. Their continuous hours of working and the existing lacunae in regard to their mental health in the current study setting, this study was conducted to elicit if the nurses are posed to any such mental health risks and perceive any stress? Objectives: To determine the prevalence of psychological distress and the perceived stress among the study subjects. To assess the factors associated with psychological distress and perceived stress. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted among all the nursing staffs at our tertiary care centre for 2 months. A predesigned and pretested semi-structured self-administered questionnaire including general health questionnaire (GHQ)-12 and perceived stress scale (PSS)-10 were used to collect the data and to asses psychological distress and perceived stress considering the cut-off scores of a minimum of 12 and 19, respectively. Data were entered into Microsoft Excel 2010 and analyzed using the SPSS software version 20.0, Armonk, NY, USA: IBM Corp. Results: The mean age of the participants was 24.4 ± 3.7 years. Mean GHQ-12 score was 11. As per the scores, the cutoff of at least 12 was found in 35% of the respondents indicating the prevalence of psychological distress among 35.0% and as per the screening tool PSS-10 used, majority of the study subjects (93.0%) perceived moderate level of stress with a median score of 19. Conclusion: Nearly one-third of the nursing personnel were under psychological distress and almost the entire nursing faculty perceived moderate level of stress.

Keywords

• general health questionnaire -12
• nursing
• perceived stress scale
• perceived stress scale-10
• psychological distress