Objective: The study aimed to determine the sources and level of job stress experienced by nurses who were
working in intensive care units, and to find-out the relationship between work-related stress and some variables
such as age, gender, educational level, marital status, and years of experience in cardiac surgical intensive care
unit.
Metl]odo]ogy: A descriptive study was conducted on nurses working in the cardiosurgical intensive care units in
Baghdad hospitals. The study sample was selected purposively and consisted of (60) nurses who were working
in cardiosurgical intensive care units in Baghdad city (Ibm Al-Betar Hospital for Cardiac Surgery, Ibn A1-Nafis
Hospital for Cardiovascular Diseases, and the Iraqi Center for Heatt Diseases) for the period of February l§t
2006 to April 6th 2006. Interview technique was employed and each interview took approxinately 20-30 minuets
when the nurse filled the questionnaire. A questionliaire was designed by the investigators which consisted of
two parts, first pat is concerned with the demographic characteristics of the sample and the second one is
concerned with the environmental stressors, and it contains (28) items that describes the physical and
psychological stressors .
Results: The results of the study revealed that most of the sample was female, their ages ranged from (30-39)
years, university graduates, single, duration working in cardiosurgical intensive care units for (6-10) years. Also,
the results revealed that nurses in cardiac surgical intensive care units suffering from severe level of stress in the
areas of physical and psychological, and the physical stressors had more severity.
Recommendations: The recommends that stress management programs should be employed to assist
cardiosurgical intensive care units nurses to deal with job stress and providing training opportunity for them is a
vital process to meet the new challenges.