Coping with being your own resource : Health care professionals' coping strategies in Sweden and the US

Abstract: Background: Working in the healthcare field can be stressful, and health care professionals, especially nurses, report the highest levels of work-related stress. There are two main approaches to studying work related stress. One of which is coping. A term that entails how individuals deal with stressful situations, whilst the other approach concern looking at organizational issues causing the stress (Naidoo & Willis 2016). Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand how health care professionals (HCP) in Sweden and the United states of America (US) cope with work related stress. Method: The present thesis is a comparative meta-ethnography which used Noblit & Hare’s (1988) interpretive approach to reciprocally synthesize previous qualitative research results. The research results were analyzed through Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) transactional theory on coping, as well as systems theory perspective. Results: Results show that health care professionals in both Sweden and the US use especially three coping strategies: Creating boundaries between the professional- and personal self; using collegial support; as well as finding ‘meaning’. Workplace resources emerged as an important theme for those coping strategies. Which is congruent with previous research of how an individual’s coping process is open to change in accordance with the external environment’s conditions. Discussion: The results indicate that health care professionals both in Sweden and the US have to mainly help themselves as well as their peers in the coping process due to unavailability or lack of organizational resources in the health care field.