THE PHENOMENON OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS IN NURSING: A SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE.
Contributors: Wright Institute.
Published: 1986
Number of pages: 500
Subjects: Psychology, Industrial.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This is a theoretical study of occupational stress among registered nurses working in hospitals. In recent years, stress has been recognized as a serious occupational hazard of the nursing profession. This awareness has fostered an increased interest in stress by hospital management, social scientists, and the nursing profession and has given rise to a body of literature devoted to understanding and alleviating the problem of stress in nursing. The present study contributes a social perspective to this literature.

The existing literature on occupational stress in nursing is characterized by an asocial, individualistic, methodological orientation in regards to both the causality and amelioration of occupational stress. Hence, in this paradigm, both the cause and solution to the phenomenon of pathological stress are located in the individual.

This methodological orientation is examined and found to be problematic in that it reifies social determinants of stress, conceals the need for collective solutions, and functions to provide ideological support for the existing power relationships in the hospital and larger society.

The form of the present social analysis of occupational stress is constructed from the materialist-epidemiological approach to understanding pathology. Central to materialist epidemiology is the contention that pathology, while multifactorial in origin, is largely socially determined. In regards to occupational stress, it is argued in this study that an irreconcilable conflict exists between the capitalist organization of the nursing-labor process and the basic need of nurses for satisfying, fulfilling labor. The pervasive extent of pathological stress in nursing is viewed as a manifestation of this conflict.

The perspective that occupational stress is largely social in origin dictates that solutions to stress must address social determinants of the problem. It is argued here that a fundamental transformation of the existing nursing-labor process is required for the significant alleviation of occupational stress.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03, Section: B, page: 0904.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE WRIGHT INSTITUTE, 1986.

School code: 0253.