Staff nurse perceptions of stressors and support needs in their workplace.

This qualitative study explored the stresses and support needs of individual acute care staff nurses. Twenty-eight nurses volunteered to keep a log of these two variables during one specific work day and were interviewed on the following day to elicit their perceptions. Content analysis of the interviews revealed that at any given time staff nurses experienced stress related to organizational/environmental, job component, and/or intrapersonal factors. Stress factors, time of day, and character of the individual can all influence the need for support. Eleven support needs were described. These results indicate that future research on this subject should employ a methodology which allows support to be studied as a dynamic process.