Introduction

Persons performing medical professions are particularly vulnerable the occurrence of stress. Nursing, the essence of which is to help healthy and ill individuals to maintain health, regain health, alleviate suffering, and facilitate dignified dying through a wide range and specific type of personal commitment, puts an immense challenge before the person performing it.

Aim of the study

The main objective of this paper is to assess the health behaviour of nurses in the context of stress related to professional work.

Material and methods

The survey was carried out in Sucha Beskidzka among 125 nurses. The research used a diagnostic survey method, a survey technique, the author’s questionnaire, Scale PSS-10, the Inventory of Health Behaviours, and the Scale of Positive Health Behaviours as tools. The relationship between variables was determined by: independence test 2, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, and Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA test.

Results

Among the stressful factors the respondents most often indicated: excessive bureaucratic burden (73.6%), lack of personnel (40.8%), responsibility for human health and life (47.2%), helplessness regarding the patient’s suffering (45.6%), claims from the patient (44.8%), and difficulties regarding the flow of information (36.0%). The intensity of experienced stress by the respondents was medium. The fre-quency of health behaviours undertaken by nurses was average. Nurses working in surgical wards had a higher level of positive health behaviours in comparison to others.

Conclusions

The health behaviours of nurses are dependent on the amount and quality of stress factors related to professional work.