The relationship between self-esteem of nurses and their choice of strategies to cope with workload burden

Design: Quantitative cross-sectional study.

Methods: The sample consisted of 509 nurses. Two coping strategies questionnaires – Brief COPE and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale – RSES were used to collect data. The data were evaluated by descriptive statistical methods and analysed via ANOVA.

Results: Nurses prefer to adopt a range of adaptive coping strategies rather than maladaptive coping strategies. The most frequently chosen adaptive coping strategies used by nurses in clinical practice are acceptance, planning, and active coping. We found that selection of coping strategies is closely related to self-esteem. We registered a significant difference in preferences for adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies as follows: nurses with high self-esteem scores (RSES) preferred adaptive coping strategies: active coping (p = 0.017), positive reframing (p = 0.001), planning (p = 0.020), and acceptance (p = 0.045). We identified selection of maladaptive coping strategies in nurses with average and low self-esteem scale results, i.e.: denial (p = 0.000), disengaged behaviour (p = 0.001), and self-blaming (p = 0.000).

Conclusion: The results of the study suggest that it is important to support nurses’ self-esteem since this influences choice of adaptive coping strategies. These are an effective means of coping with the burden on nurses, which directly affects the quality of nursing care provided to patients in clinical practice.