Background:

The care of people exposes workers to stress, which may be related to workload, psychological and social environment, where the high demands of working life and the opportunity to control them are scarce.

Objective:

To identify the occupational stressors generating risks in nursing health at Intensive Care Units.

Method:

Cross-sectional descriptive study, convenience sample n=37 nurses. The Nursing Stress Scale by Gray-Toft and Anderson was used, measuring 7 stress factors at work distributed in 3 groups: workload, psychological environment and social environment.

Results:

86,5% was women, with an average age of 34,6 ± 8.2 years, 86,5% work in shifts, seniority work 8,9 ± 7.6 years. 48,6% of the stressors are related to workload, given by the task performance that do not correspond to nursing job and the lack of time to provide emotional support to patients. In the psychological environment the stressor was the performance of procedures that are painful for the patient, while in the social environment, 70,2% the stressor was the absence of professional staff needed for the dying patient.

Conclusions:

Nursing professionals are mostly women, with several years of work experience, the workload being the main triggering stress, leading to a loss of control over nursing care. Although the stressors of the social environment are less present, the suffering and pain of the patient are psychological stress-generating factors.