Coping Mechanisms of Mental Health Nurses in Work-Related Stress Situations: Literature Review

Abstract

The aim of this literature review was to find out the coping mechanisms of psychiatric nurses during their provision of care. The purpose was to provide Evidence Based knowledge to psychiatric nurses on how to deal/cope with work-related stress, thereby enabling them to provide care to both the patients and themselves alike. Articles that were used for this study were retrieved from the Allied Data Base, Cinahl (Ebco), Academic Search Elite and Medline. The Inclusion/Exclusion criteria was considered for the selection of articles that were used for the study. The relevance of the articles was also based on how effective the titles, abstract and full text answered the research question. The analysis and synthesis of the 11 articles used for the study was based on thematic analysis. Full texts of the articles were read through, and data was grouped to form themes and sub-teams. Three themes were identified in the study: Psychiatric nurses stress-related situations, coping mechanisms psychiatric nurses employ to cope with work-related stress and effects of the mechanisms employed by psychiatric nurses in coping with work-related stress. During the study, it was observed that quality of mental health care was hampered by the challenges or workplace stressors that psychiatric nurses faced in the work-environment. It was for this reason that the study suggested that measures that safeguard the mental/emotional health of psychiatric nurses should be taken by the psychiatric management and other stakeholders. If this is achieved, the mental health care sector will be assured of better health outcomes