Abstract : Objective : Surgical nurses are exposed to unusual amounts of stress during operations. In 2013, we categorized their stress level and created “the Surgical Nurse’s Stress Questionnaire” which comprised 32 items representing 7 factors. This study was undertaken to verify the validity and reliability of the questionnaire.

Methods : A questionnaire survey was given to 2,714 surgical nurses working at 67 hospitals in Japan, which were national, prefectural, or public/private university hospitals. We obtained consent from these hospitals. The survey included the following : basic demographic characteristics, “the Surgical Nurse’s Stress Questionnaire”, “the Job Stress Questionnaire”, “the General Coping Questionnaire”, and “the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12)”. The latter three questionnaires are existing tools to evaluate stress. After calculating descriptive statistics, we performed factor analysis on “the Surgical Nurse’s Stress Questionnaire”. We then calculated Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and validity. This study was approved by the ethics committee of Toho University Ohashi Hospital.

Results : After setting the commonality standard value to under 0.4 and performing principal component analysis, “the Surgical Nurse’s stress Questionnaire” was re-organized into 20 items under 3 factors. The first factor was “lack of experience” with 8 items. The second factor was “operating room environment and relationship with doctors” with 8 items. The third factor was “lack of debriefing among nurses” with 4 items. “The Surgical Nurse’s Stress Questionnaire” was negative correlated with “the Job Stress Questionnaire” and positive correlated with the “GHQ-12”. Furthermore, there was no correlation with “the General Coping Questionnaire” has not been admitted.

Discussion : After carefully analyzing “the Surgical Nurse’s Stress Questionnaire” comprising 32 items representing 7 factors, we found that surgical nurse’s stress levels can be measured by 20 items representing 3 factors. Thus, the validity and reliability of the questionnaire have been verified.