Incidence of stress among emergency nurses: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: This study’s main purpose is to evaluate the stress level among emergency nurses systematically. Methods: Adhering to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines, nine databases, including PubMed, Cochrane, web of science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, and China biomedical literature service system, were searched to collect cross-sectional studies on emergency nurses. Two researchers independently screened the literature, extracted the data, and evaluated the risk of bias in the included studies. Results: From 2655 studies, 21 cross-sectional studies were included, including 4293 subjects. Meta-analysis showed that the incidence of low-level stress was 0.21% (95% CI [0.18–0.24]), the incidence of middle-level stress was 0.46% (95% CI [0.33–0.58]), and the incidence of high-level stress was 0.32% (95% CI [0.22–0.41]), which is mainly at the medium level. Conclusion: This review identified the stress level of emergency nurses mainly at the medium level. This result makes nursing administrators pay more attention to the mental health problems of emergency nurses and actively take measures to promote the physical and mental health of emergency nurses and further promote the development of the nursing profession.