Introduction: Nurses perform demanding work, as they are responsible for the patient's health
and well-being. Because they often do not have enough influence on this to control the situation,
the work of nurses is very stressful. Nurses in emergency units perform particularly stressful
work, because work in emergeny units is especially unpredictable. Purpose: The aim of this
thesis is to find out how nurses in emergency units experience stress. We were interested in
what are the main factors they face and how nurses working in emergency units deal with stress.
Methods: We used the descriptive method of work, and the literature search took place in the
period from 12/6/2022 to 3/6/2023 in foreign and domestic bibliographic databases. With the
help of keywords and inclusion factors, we included five studies, related to the question, which
are the most common factors for causing stress among nurses in emergency units and five
studies, related to different stress-coping techniques nurses use in emergency units. Results:
We found out the main factors of stress are overload, lack of staff, lack of relationships with
patients and relatives, very stressful situations, lack of resources, burnout, a large number of
treating patients etc., and examples of good practices for dealing with stress were: mindfulness,
mantra meditation, listening to music, aromatherapy, pilates and coaching. Discussion and
conclusion: All research on stress coping techniques reported positive effects and emphasized
the importance of awareness and active coping with stress. The diploma thesis is aimed at
raising awareness of the stressful work, performed by nurses in emergency units and at finding
good practices that could be introduced in Slovenia as well.
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