Thesis

stressors. According to the researchers, this finding propose that it does not matter which
culture or country the nurse comes from they still state that the quantity of work which they
should do and the emotional factors related to death/dying is causing high amounts of stress
for them. Lambert et al. (op. cit.) states that it is not unexpected that it is workload and
death/dying which is causing the highest amounts of stress for the nurses in the USA, since
other research has also found this to be true of western cultures (see for example Carson et al.,
1996; Snape & Cavanagh, 1993; Fong, 1993; Cheng et al., 2000). Consequently, this study
conducted by Lambert et al. (2004) gives support to the suggestion that nurses working in
Asia are experiencing similar workplace stress like nurses working in western cultures.
As Lambert et al. (2004) described above, the nurses from Thailand scored much lower on
mental health than did nurses in USA, South Korea, and Japan. The researchers argued that
this result might be due to a possible disharmony between the doctors and the nurses. The
researchers did show in their research that lower scores on mental health could be predicted
by conflict with doctors in the Thai sample. The nurses in Thailand in Lambert et al.’s study
(op. cit.) had a Baccalaureate diploma and because of this they probably had a way of
sophisticated critical thinking and were assertive in their way of being. Due to these two
factors there might have occurred conflicts between the doctors and nurses. When it comes to
physical health the nurses from the four different countries reported different results. In Japan
the nurses stated that workplace stressor, workload, the demographic variables, and the
number of people in the household predicted physical health most significantly. This result
proposes that higher workload together with all the extra duties which comes from home has
an influence on the nurses’ physical well-being. In the Japanese culture there is a trend that
women are anticipated to be in charge of family members’ wishes and desires (Shui, 1998). In
South Korea the nurses stated that wanting social support, demographical variables, the
possibility of leaving ones current job, predicted physical health most significantly. The fact
that wanting social support was positively connected to physical health could be explained by
the fact that when a nurse wants and gets physical or psychological support from someone
else, her physical health and/or mental health can be improved (Chapman, 1993; Fong, 1993;
Bourbonnais, Comeau & Vezina, 1999). Lambert et al. (2004) showed that the variable of the
possibility of leaving one’s current job could be negatively related to physical health in this
sample. In Thailand the nurses stated that demographic variables, amount of people in the
household, years working as a nurse and the level of income predicted physical health most
significantly. The variables like amount of people in the household and years working as a