occupational stress and its determinants among nursing staff of hospitals affiliated to zanjan university of medical sciences in 2011

background: nurses are exposed to various stressful situations in their work environment. it is obvious that occupational stress affects physical and psychological health of nurses and consequently the quality of their work. the purpose of the present study was to determine nursing occupational stress and factors influencing that in order to implement interventional programs for decreasing them. methods: in this cross- sectional study, 241 nurses working in teaching hospitals of zanjan were selected through stratified sampling. data were collected through three questionnaires for demographic features, job characteristics and nursing stress scale. data analysis was performed through spss16 and using kruskal wallis, mann whitney u test and spearman correlation. results: in whole, 1.2% of the nurses had low tension, while 48.1% were suffering from moderate and 50.6% from high levels of tension in their positions. female nurses and those without intention for continuing studies had significantly higher levels of job stress (p<0.007 and p<0.05 respectively). job stress showed no significant relationship with age, marital states, shift working, job experience, work place, overtime working and number of children. conclusion: the level of stress is high in nurses. it is suggested that implementing some interventional measures for decreasing nursing job stress, especially in high risk groups, such as preventing contacts with physicians or coworkers can decrease job stress in nurses.