Sleep quality and coping styles among nurses working in tertiary cancer institutions: a mixed-method study

Providing nursing care is a challenging job which may lead to serious effects on sleep quality, thereby leading to lower work productivity and reduced job satisfaction. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to adopt effective and adaptive coping strategies to deal with day-to-day stress and to improve sleep.

This study aimed to assess the sleep quality of nurses and the coping styles employed by them to deal with the stressors at the workplace.

This cross-sectional study included (n=125) nurses working across different wards and intensive care units in two cancer hospitals. The sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, while brief COPE was used to assess the coping styles. Stress was assessed using a Likert scale.

The results indicated that the majority of the nurses (59.2%) had poor sleep quality. However, most nurses employed problem-focused coping (70.4%) compared with emotion-focused (21.6%) and avoidant coping (8%). Poor sleep quality was found to have significant association with problem-focused coping (r=0.27), emotion-focused coping (r=0.25) and stress (r=0.42). A thematic analysis of the responses resulted in the emergence of eight major themes causing stress including management issues, novelty of job, family stress, health, work-life balance, workload, interpersonal relations and career growth.

Poor sleep quality was observed in more than half of the nurses who participated in this study. This can be attributed to several reasons mostly relating to work stress. Thus, it becomes increasingly important to address these issues and provide adequate support on an organisational level to improve their psychological well-being.