Background: The quality of Registered Nurses' worklife is impacting nurses' mental health, and the standard of care received by clients. Contributing factors to nurses' stress are the trauma of continuous caring for those in great suffering, and adverse working conditions.
Objectives: i) to explore the prevalence of work-related stress in a provincial sample of Registered Nurses; ii) to compare the levels of compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress reported by nurses in hospital, community, non-direct care settings, and, iii) to identify factors that predict levels of nursing work stress.