Association of Job Stress and Hypertension among Nurses in Imo State, Nigeria

Hypertension is one of the major public health problems and it is prevalent all over the world. Raised blood pressure (BP) is a major risk factor for chronic heart disease, stroke and coronary heart disease. This study was a descriptive and correlation study carried out to investigate the association of job stress and hypertension among nurses in Imo state, Nigeria. A well-structured questionnaire was used to interview the subjects and obtain data for the study. All subjects used for this study gave an informed consent to be part of the study. Data analysis was performed using SPSS Statistics version 23. Bivariate (unadjusted) discriminant analysis method was used to assess the correlation of hypertension with job stress. Results showed that significant correlation was found between hypertension and job stress (Wilks’s Lambda=0.965, F=13.85, p <0.0001), a significant proportion (34.3%) of the hypertensive nurses stated that they feel stressful working on night compared with 19.0% who are non-hypertensive. But the corresponding mean score (2.6) remained the same for both groups. Up to 21.8% of the non-hypertensive nurses compared with 32.1% of the hypertensive nurses reported that most of the times they deprive themselves from sleeping just to perform work task. The mean score showed variations for two groups with higher score for the non-hypertensive among those that find it stressful to engage in a non-nursing task while on duty (non-hypertensive 2.6, hypertensive 2.3). The score was rather higher in the hypertensive (3.0) than the non-hypertensive (2.5) among those who responded that the task they handle make them feel fatigued. In conclusion, there was a correlation between job stress and hypertension. It was recommended that stress intervention programmes be introduced to encourage nurses to manage stress in the workplace.Keywords: Hypertension, High Blood Pressure, Job stress, Nurses, Cardiovascular disease.