The Assessment of Stress Factors and Nurse Performance in Ruhaama County.

Abstract

This study assessed the influence of stress factors on nurse performance. The objectives of the study were to determine the level of performance of nurses, establish whether work environment stress factors, economic stress factors and family stress factors influenced nurse performance in Ruhaama County. This is in view that though nurses play a noble role in the provision of health care in the wider community of Uganda, they are faced with challenges that expose them to stressful situations that are can affect their work, it is against this background that a research was conducted to assess how these influence their work performance. The study was conducted through a cross sectional study design; data was collected in 2013 through questionnaires and key informant interviews from 106 nurses, 12 health unit in charges and the DHO. The data was analyzed using EPI DATA, SPSS and chi square tests of goodness fit was used to test whether the stress factors under study had any influence on performance of nurses in Ruhaama County and results were presented in tables and figures. The study found out that the performance of nurse was moderate, meaning that the nurses were, performing their work averagely this may be attributed to the fact that most of the nurses in the visited health centers were nursing assistants who are not very skilled and could be facing challenges on how to attend to complicated patient conditions. The study also found out that work environment stress factor had no significant influence on nurse performance especially may be because they had good work relationships and support from the health in charges. While in the family stress factors, the study found out that poor family relationships and sickness or death of a family member had significant influence on nurse performance. This could be because of the nature of nurses’ work that keeps them away from their family causing conflicts and resultant stress that significantly had an influence on their performance. On the other hand marital status and social support had no significant influence on nurse performance. Under economic stress factors, it was also found out that salary earned had a significant influence on nurse performance. This was majorly because they felt it was too little to meet their basic needs and they had to depend on loans to take care of these needs. However, not being able to save and having loans as well as employment of spouse had no significant influence on their performance. Basing on the above findings, the researcher recommended that in order to raise the overall performance of nurses above average, an effort by the County health department and District should be made to address some of the challenges nurse are facing so as to support them and enhance their ability to perform, staffing levels and supply of general medical supplies should be improved. Other recommendations are that nurse counseling services should be established within the health units, improving payment of nurses and further research comprising a wider area should be done to facilitate generalization of results