Nurses have been identified as being a group of professionals who report very high levels of stress in the work

place(Smith et al. 2000).The need to address the causes of stress for healthcare workers has been recognised at a local level with the introduction of a stress assessment tool : this however has limited use as it is not a prective tool and is utilised following a period of sickness from work for which stress has been identified as the reason for the abscence .Stress is usually defined from a demand-perceptionresponse perspective (see Bartlett 1998). Lazarus and Folkman (1984) integrated this view into a cognitive theory of stress that has become the most widely applied theory in the study of occupational stress and stress management (Lehrer & Woolfolk 1993, Rick & Perrewe 1995). The basic concept is that stress relates both to an individuals perception of the demands being made on them and to their perception of their capability to meet those demands. A mismatch will mean that an individuals stress threshold is exceeded, triggering a stress response (Clancy & McVicar 2002). The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates the costs to society of work-related stress to be around 4 billion each year, while 13.5 million working days were lost to stress in 2007/2008 .(ref) Mental health nuses often experience stress as a result of their exposure to acts of violent and / or agreession from clients ( ref ) ,The mental health rehabilitation in this paper is an eight bedded unit which is based in a community setting and provides rehabilitatin based on social inclusion . There have been no inciddents of violence or aggresssion in the two years that I have been working there yet 50% of the staff nurses have been absent from work for perids of up to six months with the reason of work stress as the reason given . This has implications for both staff and clients : staff nurese work extra shifts to fill the shortfall ( result ) The absent nurses act as care coordinators for clients and work closely with them on their individual rehabilitatin into the community thus their discharge

is potenially delayed . This paper will discuss the issue from a professional perpective and offer recommendations for leadership and management interventions to address the issue . This paper reviews the implications of the subjective aspects of stress perception for nurses who, with teachers and managers, are a professional group most likely to report very high levels of workplace stress Discussion The UK Government has recognized the need to address sources of stress in health care, and in particular to reverse the shortfall in nurse recruitment and retention, and to introduce a participative style of management (Department of Health 2002a, 2002b).The competency standards for registered nurses, captures the essence of transformational leadershipThe enrolled nurse competencies exist within a transactional framework. It articulates the structure of a team that is driven by tight regimented roles and job descriptions where no discussion takes place. It ensures that consensus and uniformity are kept as the norm, which can stifle a creative professional nurse. The division of tasks also achieves