Emergency departments, where individuals under extreme stress are served and frequent deaths, life threatening accidents, and critical cases are observed, are evaluated as settings with high occupational stress. This study was conducted to determine common occupational health problems of nurses working at emergency departments in Gaziantep/Turkey. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study. The sample of the study consisted of 111 nurses who were voluntary to participate in the study. The data of this study were collected through face-to-face interview technique by using personal information and questionnaire form that was prepared by the researchers upon the literature review. The nurses stated that they were most commonly stuck by a needle (83.8%) and noise (54.1%); whereas, they stated that the most common psychological factor faced by them was verbal abuse by patients and/or patient relatives (81.1%), the most common chemical factor faced by them was being subjected to disinfectants (64.0%), and the most common biological factor faced by them was being subjected to viral infections (48.6%). More than half of the nurses (64.9%) had complaints of waist and back aches. It was determined that the nurses who were working at emergency departments for 1-3 years experienced more problems of discal hernia in a statistically significant manner (50.0%) (p<0.05). It was determined that nurses working at emergency department faced with occupational factors and risks during work and experienced many health problems related to these factors and risks.

Key Words: Occupational health problems, emergency department, nurse, occupational factors, environment