Occupational Stress, Work-Life Balance, and Intention to Stay among Nurses during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: This study examined the levels of occupational stress, work-life balance, and intention to stay among nurses working at tertiary hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, and investigated the associations among these variables.Methods: This descriptive correlational study included 240 nurses working at a tertiary general hospital. Data were collected on participants’ general characteristics, occupational stress, work-life balance, and intention to stay. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, and multiple regression analysis were performed to examine the associations among occupational stress, work-life balance, and intention to stay while adjusting for participants’ general characteristics.Results: The mean age was 27.85 years, and the mean clinical experience was 4.23 years. Half of the participants had experience caring for patients with COVID-19. Mean scores for occupational stress, work-life balance, and intention to stay were 87.51, 87.34, and 29.99, respectively. Occupational stress was negatively correlated with work-life balance (r=–0.41, P<0.001), whereas neither occupational stress nor work-life balance was significantly correlated with intention to stay. Multiple regression analysis showed that age was associated with intention to stay (β=0.19, P=0.029), but the model explained only 3.2% of the variance (adjusted R2=0.03).Conclusions: Occupational stress and work-life balance were not significantly associated with intention to stay among nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although age was significantly associated with intention to stay, the regression model explained only a small proportion of the variance. Further studies are needed to identify additional factors associated with nurses’ intention to stay.