Relationship between Stress Levels and Quality of Patient Care, during the year 2023, at the Liborio Panchana Sotomayor Public Hospital, Ecuador.

Abstract

Workplace stress constitutes a public health issue and is classified by the International Labor Organization as a global epidemic. In Ecuador, the nursing staff in health entities is small compared to the number of patients, in the order of 5/10,000 inhabitants, this being an important cause of their stress levels, impacting the quality of services. Several regional and local studies relate nursing stress with some response variable linked to patient care. In this quantitative approach study, we sought to relate nursing stress with the quality of patient care at the Liborio Panchana public hospital, in the city of Santa Elena in Ecuador, for which survey-type instruments were designed based on Betty Neuman's stress coping theory and the EVACALEN model (Evaluation of the Quality of Nursing Care) by Adonis Donabedian, which were opportunely validated by experts. The independent and dependent variables were structured based on the dimensions work stress, work overload and work environment, and professional competencies, nurse-patient interpersonal relationship and patient education, respectively. The results showed a high inverse relationship between the analyzed variables, revealing a strong statistical association between them.