Stress and coping relationships in the medical environment: A natural experiment

Providing highly technical care for seriously ill cancer patients poses a unique and stressful challenge for health care providers. This study examined the coping responses of one such group of providers —11 nurses in a bone marrow transplant unit who were exposed to a sudden and stressful series of events that affected the entire staff. This powerful natural experiment provided a unique opportunity to conduct a longitudinal evaluation or stress and coping relationships in the medical environment. Significant differences in the nurses’ reactions to stress were observed, and these differences were related to important factors such as coping strategies, job involvement, role conflict, and home-work conflict. Further analysis included comparisons of the unit data with a large normative sample of nurses at tne same hospital. Overall, the results support the usefulness of a transactional process-oriented model in addressing the issue of stress in oncology settings.