Background: The nursing profession involves meetings and situations which can be stressful. The work environment can cause additional stress in the form of time pressure, lack of support from colleagues, management or disgruntled family members and patients. This places the nurse in a position that requires a sharpened ability to handle stress. It can become overwhelming and unmanageable and cause a serious threat to the nurse's health and wellbeing. To handle stress the nurses uses different coping strategies.

Aim: The aim of the review was to gain a better understanding of how nurses deal with occupational stress.

Method: A systematic literature overview study based on eleven articles, including both qualitative and quantitative studies.

Results: Nurses deal with stress in different ways based on their own resources. The results were divided in to seven themes: Seeking social support for emotional expression, Planning and problem solving to reduce stress, Setting boundaries to alleviate stress, Create time and space for recovery, Create time for reflection and guidance, Manage what cannot be affected and Creating distance in order to gain perspective.

Conclusion: Perceived stress differs wide between nurses. A great responsibility therefore rests on the nurse herself to learn to manage her stress. The employer can create supportive conditions but the nurse must learn to master their own stress.