[Stress symptoms in female nurses working in emergency rooms]

This is a sectional study carried out in an emergency room, with the purpose of identifying the association of socio-demographic, occupational and economic data in nursing workers presenting stress symptoms. Data was collected from 33 subjects, in July and August 2009, using an inventory of stress symptoms for adults. Results show that most of the workers presented stress symptoms at resistance and almost-exhaustion stages, with presence of psychological and physical symptoms. The highest occurrence was found in female younger workers that were married, graduated, catholic, without a second job, working as nursing technicians in the afternoon or at night, in the emergency room for more than six years, and in the nursing field for less than ten years. It was concluded that something should be done to treat the existing cases of stress in order to avoid their evolution to more serious stages, and prevent new occurrences.