ABSTRACT

Background: Nursing Profession is stressful and the stress of the job can causes burnout, but people's perception of a stressful event and coping strategies can adjust this relation. The purpose of present study was to compare burnout in nurses of ICU, emergency and surgical wards and its relationship with their perceived stress and coping strategies.

Methods: This is a descriptive-correlational study. The population of study were all male and female nurses who are working in 4 teaching hospitals which were located in Sari (N=180). Number of study's sample based on Krejcie & Morgan tables determined 120 nurses who selected by stratified random sampling from all the nurses working in ICU, emergency and surgical wards. The research instrument was Tedym burnout questionnaire, Cohen's Perceived Stress scale and Endler & Parker's coping strategies scale. Descriptive-analytical tests in Spss software v.19 were used for data analyze.

Results: Results showed that 64.16% (77 persons) of nurses were in moderate level of job burnout, 31.66% (38 persons) in high level and 4.2% (5 persons) in low level of job burnout. Also, there were no significant difference in burnout between the nurses of Emergency, ICU and Surgery wards (F=1.511, P=0.255). There was a positive significant relationship between perception of stress, emotion-oriented strategies and avoidance with burnout (r=0.429, r=0.577,�r=0.381,�p=0.000) and also negative significant correlation between task-oriented and burnout (r=-0.480, p=0.000).

Conclusion: According to the high level of burnout in nurses and its related perceived stress and coping strategies, identifying nurses who perceive high stress or use improper coping strategies is necessary.

Key Words: Burnout, Perceived Stress, Coping Strategies, Nurse.