OHS in the Nursing Workplace: Accountability and the management of stress

By Helen Wilson and Annette Huntington

A critical examination of research into occupational stress in nursing.

The theoretical approach that has dominated in recent years has focused on the individual. In spite of evidence that the main sources of stress for nurses are related to working conditions, the focus is on the individual nurse and her or his personal response to stress. This approach encourages the development of interventions where the objectives are the individual management of stress, and thereby consolidates nurses' perceptions of powerlessness. Alternatives to these palliative measures, such as highlighting the legal obligations of employers to provide a safe workplace or collective industrial action for change, are glaringly absent from the literature. The importance of such an approach is supported by recent findings from the USA on the advantages of hospitals which promote nurses' autonomy and control.

(Journal of Occupational Health and Safety - Australia and New Zealand; vol. 21 no 2, April 2005) pp113-20