Emotional Distress and Coping Among Nurses Working in Outpatient Departments at Lusaka University Teaching Hospitals, Zambia

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Introduction: Emotional distress among nurses has become a global health concern. Emotional issues associated with occupational stress have become a threat to the nursing profession. Emotional issues in the nursing profession results from the strenuous and demanding nature of the work. Therefore, the need to investigate the presence of and factors associated with emotional distress among nurses is fundamental to development of strategies that should address nurse’s plight with regards to the emotional toll that their work may have on them. The negative consequences of leaving emotional distress among nurses unaddressed motivated the need to undertake this study. Methodology: A cross sectional analytical study design was employed to conduct the present study at the University Teaching Hospitals in Zambia. Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Zambia Biomedical Research Ethics Committee (UNZABREC) and permission to conduct the study was granted by the National Health Research authority (NHRA). The study involved 71 nurses working in Out-Patients Department who completed a self-administered structured questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20), while Chi-square was used to test the association between categorical variables. In addition, binary logistic regression analysis was used to ascertain the relationship between the dependent variable (emotional distress) and the independent variables. P-values less than 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant. Findings: Emotional distress was observed to be prevalent among 56.3 percent nurses and among the distressed, 25 percent showed high levels of distress. There was a strong association between emotional distress and coping among nurses (p-value < 0.001c) and as such it was found that nurses who employed adaptive coping strategies unlike maladaptive strategies proved to be less distressed. Occupational stressors showed