Introduction
According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984), stress is the relationship existing between a person and the environment that compels the individual beyond resources and consequently endangering life. Stress in this context, has been defined in respect to the resources and the environmental demands. Each and every individual has a specific capacity to dealing with the challenges of imbalance between the personal needs and the environmental resources. Conversely, individuals have always learned the strategies of dealing with stress, which are known as the coping strategies.
Healthcare professionals; especially nurses are often faced with stress and burnouts at work. The stress results from the compelling demands in the healthcare settings. In most cases, the healthcare professionals tend to show empathy making them to become irresistibly worked out. Burnout on the other hand results from extensive participation in service provision without adequate rest. The healthcare professionals like nurses and the physicians must have favorable conditions under which they perform their duties. The healthcare professionals must know how to tender the antecedents versus the environmental variables during their service provision (Jamal, 2013).
The personal demands versus the environmental demands are the main basis for stress. Experiences that individuals go through are usually tough and emotionally challenging. Most people do not know how to apply the coping styles thus they end up experiencing the physiological changes as well as the physicall changes. The coping strategies often bring desirable changes to individuals.
The theory by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) portends that the complex processes yield the contributory antecedents that purport to rejuvenate the occurrence of stress. Ideally, the personal factors that facilitate stress include personal commitments and beliefs amid the compelling environmental challenges. This theory identifies the demands of the profession as well as the constraints. Idyllically, threshold of stress is dependent on the mediating processes which are considered as the cognitive appraisals in the theory (Thomas & Lankau, 2009).
The theory of stress and coping helps individuals to understand some of the best ways of dealing with stress. Stress has been labeled as a common feature; especially in the Intensive Care Units (ICU), where rigorous and demanding services are required. This theory explains how best the issue of stress can be addressed in the healthcare units. It also explains to what extent the coping styles should be practiced and applied.
Assumptions
The first assumption of this theory is that both the environmental and the personal factors act against each other. In this sense, the theorists contend that the forces reciprocate on one another creating a balance. Although the forces may not perfectly counter one another, it is evident that the conflict between the environmental and the personal factors in an individual lead to stress. Second assumption entails the relationship between emotions, cognitions and change. The theorists argue that both cognitions and emotions are subject to change. The changes that individuals experience in their day to day lives may compel them to unfavorable conditions. This is evident since periodical changes in the environment and the norms of the environment may make an individual worked up. In this sense, the individual may end up in stress. In addition, the third assumption says that a number of natural and environmental attributes are the prerequisites for emotions, experiences as well as the consequential action tendencies (Yi-Hua & Mei-Ling, 2012).
Stress can be of variant causes and of variant nature. People tend to respond to situations and use the same situation to attain their personal ventures. Stress-relevant situations affect individuals and can be solved by focusing on the same underlying situations. During this process, individuals may end up in harm of failure or losing. People often feel pleasant or strong and motivated when they finally achieve their goals; however, the main focus of stress sets in when individuals are unable to succeed their endeavors. Situational stress is very common in the healthcare units among nurses who fail to execute the management of patients as they wish (Peterson & Bredow, 2009).
Some people are stressed with premonitions of harmful events and loss. A forecast of harm or loss to a person may subject an individual to stress. In addition to this, overwhelming personal issues may affect the performance and lives of the individual caregivers. Some healthcare givers experience stress as a result of lost lives during their service provision. It is obvious that hurtful aspects of life make individuals incompetent and depressed.
Some of the experiences can only be solved through pace and strategy setting. These two factors will determine the magnitude of the strategy chosen. Individuals should understand the essence of difficulties and ambiguity in the procedures that they carry out. Personal beliefs and convictions are very common facilitators of burnouts and stress. In order to understand how to tame all these challenges, individuals must position themselves on a rational balance. Being so selfless and empathetic may render emotions and psychological feelings on the verge. It is important to engage coping strategy in cases of predicted stressors (Jamal, 2013).
However, problems of stress and burnouts are not easy to deal with. In as much as people may realize their potential threats inline, they may still remain challenged on how to amicably resolve them. Coping styles may be double sided. In as much as people may think that the most coping styles are problem-focused, there is evidence that some of them are emotion-focused. Problem-focused coping style may be appropriate in certain circumstances; however, there are certain situations that may require diversified approaches in dealing with the problems. Idyllically, some problems can be solved through assimilative and accommodative approaches. Nevertheless, it is difficult and almost unachievable to change the environment within which people live. Stressful environment is a major contributor to stress. Coping can therefore be initiated long before stress occurs. There are many strategies that can be applied prior to the occurrence of stress; however, these may not work well with every individual. In this case, the coping strategies should be built on the personal coping resources as well as the onset and progression of the stressor (D’Souza, Egan & Rees, 2013).
Conclusion
In as much as people apply the concept of coping in their lives and practice, they should also understand the importance and possible outcomes of the coping. Every individual in the nursing units are subjected to extreme burnout and stress. In this case, there are various strategies that ensure understanding of the situations as well as personal issues that facilitate the stress in these individuals. Integration of all the coping resources may not be inevitably achieved; nonetheless, coping remains one of the best ways that can be relevantly applied to reduce the problems experienced by the nursing professionals (George, 2011).
References
D’Souza, F., Egan, S., & Rees, C. (2013). The Relationship between Perfectionism, Stress and Burnout in Clinical Psychologists. Behaviour Change, 28(1), 17.
George, J. B. (2011). Nursing theories: The base for professional nursing practice. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Education.
Jamal, M. (2013). Job Stress among Hospital Employees in Middle East: Social Support and Type A Behavior as Moderators. Middle East Journal Of Business, 8(3), 7-16.
Lazarus, R. & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer.
Peterson, S. J., & Bredow, T. S. (2009). Middle range theories: Application to nursing research. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Thomas, C. H., & Lankau, M. J. (2009). Preventing burnout: the effects of LMX and mentoring on socialization, role stress, and burnout. Human Resource Management, 48(3), 417-432.
Yi-Hua, H., & Mei-Ling, W. (2012). The Moderating Role of Personality in HRM – from the Influence of Job Stress on Job Burnout Perspective. International Management Review, 8(2), 5-18.