Background and purpose: Job stress is one of the factors in the development of psychophysical symptoms in nurses. It lowers performance in organizations. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between spiritual well-being and stress coping methods to deal with job stress in nurses working in hospitals.
Materials and Methods: The study was carried out as a descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study. Totally, 285 nurses were randomly selected from Ardabil educational hospitals from ICU, CCU, EMS and infectious diseases wards. Data gathering tools were Standard questionnaire Paloutzian and Ellison Spiritual Well-being Scale, nursing job stress scale, and Billing and Moos Coping Strategies Scale. Statistical analysis used in the present study included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation test and analysis of variance. Subgroups were tested using LSD post hoc test. Independent samples t-test and ANOVA were also used to compare the groups (p <0.05).
Results: The age group of 25 to 36 years were the most participants in this study. 68.4% of the participants were women and 31.6% were men. Most participants in the project were middle-income (48.4%) and very high-income (1.8%). The results indicated that income level, work shift, education, employment status, work record, and number of overnight shifts were significantly related to job stress (p<0.05). Among the different aspects of spiritual well-being, the highest mean score was obtained by religious aspect (32.47±3.42) followed by existential aspect (27.82±2.56). The highest level of job stress, according to the nurses, was about the fear of death (14.82±4.86) and heavy work load and pressure (13.85±3.63).
Conclusions: Given the findings, there was a significant relationship between spiritual well-being and stress coping of nurses and alleviation of job stress in them. Therefore, using a health-oriented coping strategy and improving spiritual well-being and religious aspect in particular are essential.