Association of coping style and psychological well-being in hospital nurses

Nursing jobs are among the occupations experiencing high levels of stress. Level of psychological well-being and coping style with stressful situations among nurses has large impact on their job performance. Limited information exists about the relationship between coping styles and psychological well-being among nurses, so the present study examined the way of coping and the level of psychological well-being as well as their relationships among nurses.

In this correlational study, 100 nurses from Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences were selected by multi-stage random sampling in 2012. Lazarus and Folkman's coping styles and Ryff's psychological well-being Questionnaires were completed by self-report method. Collected data were entered software SPSS ver. 13 and then analyzed using Pearson correlation test.

The results showed EFCSwere more used  but PFCSstyle was less used with a little difference by mean (SD) of  87.91 (10.76) vs. 73.12 (12.15). Between EFCSand some psychological well-being dimensions such as purpose in life (P=0.01, r= -0.28) and personal development (P=0.03, r=-0.024), a significant negative association and between PFCSstyle and purpose in life, a significant positive relationship was found (P=0.006, r=0.31).

Considering that PFCSstyle is more effective in solving problems and job stress, as well as, the increased use of EFCSis associated with adverse health consequences, improvement of nurses' coping strategies to cope better with stressful events by skill training and promotion of nurses' psychological well-being level is recommended.