Determining the Precedence Order of the Factors Influencing Nurses’ Stress Level Using Multi Criteria Decision Making Techniques

Abstract

Stress management is crucial to the success of workers and organizations. The aim of this study is to determine significant level of nursing stress factor using Analytic Hierarchy Process. For this reason 32 nurses working different departments of one of the university hospital compared with pairwise comparison stress criteria for each criteria as analytic hierarchy process importance level scale. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the importance of 7 categories of stress factors, namely “Death and Dying:”, “Conflict with Physicians”, “Inadequate Preparation”, “Lack of Support”, “Conflict With Other Nurses”, “Workload” and “Uncertainty Concerning Treatment”, totally 34 sub factors, are prioritized. The results show that “Workload” (0,205) and “Uncertainty Concerning Treatment” (0,170) are the most important main factors. Also “A physician not being present in a medical emergency” (0,0773), “Not enough staff to adequately cover the unit” (0,0573) and “Too many non-nursing tasks required, such as clerical work” (0,0507) are the most important sub factors. Based on the results of this research, hospital managers can take some precautions and create stress management plans for nurses.