Stressors operating on patients in hospital care.

This diploma thesis is focused on stressors influencing patients in hospital care. The theoretical part describes stress and stressors, the influence of stress on the state of health, and I further deal with health and illness and the importance of the support provided by the patient?s family in the course of treatment. In the practical part I compare results that I obtained from three medical facilities. The first objective of my thesis was to find out what kind of stressors hospitalised patients meet with most frequently. To achieve this objective, I set a hypothesis. H1 ? The extent of stress load in patients depends on the extent of information on their illness, course of treatment and nursing care. Another objective of mine was to compare whether the extent of stress is different in various departments. This is dealt with in the second hypothesis. H2 - The extent of stress is influenced by the type of department in which the patient is hospitalised. My last objective was to find out what helps patients to deal with stressful situations. To achieve this objective, I set the third hypothesis. H3 ? Dealing with stress when staying in hospital depends on the functionality of the patient?s family and the attitude of the nursing staff. To conduct the research I employed the method of quantitative survey in the form of questionnaires. The questionnaire contained altogether 21 questions. I chose three facilities of medical care to obtain the required data. The target group were clients hospitalised in the hospital in České Budějovice, further in the hospital in Český Krumlov and in the hospital in Prachatice. The total number of correctly completed questionnaires is 228, which means that 57% of correctly completed ones out of 400 returned. The results have proved that hypothesis No. 1 has a considerable influence on patients? stress because patients with a high rate of information experience high stress only in 6.9 per cent, while patients with an insufficient rate of information experience high stress up to 58.6 per cent. In hypothesis No. 2, I also succeeded in proving a considerable influence, because up to 20.2 per cent of patients in surgical departments experience high stress, while it is only 5.3 per cent of respondents in internal departments. In hypothesis No. 3, a considerable influence has also been proved, because patients with functioning families experience low stress to a much larger extent, while low stress in patients with non-functioning families was experienced by only a small number of respondents. Similarly, the attitude of medical staffs influences the extent of stress. The results of my research can be offered to various kinds of facilities of medical and social care, to improve the quality of nursing care and eliminate some stressors. Further, these results can be offered to students of various branches of medicine studies. However, this research is of noticeable importance for the comfort of patients in various facilities mentioned above