Occupational Distress Among Nurses Through Social Media Narratives: A Scoping Review

Background/Objectives: Occupational distress threatens nurses’ well-being, workforce sustainability, and quality of care. Although most evidence derives from questionnaires, interviews, and other researcher-defined methods, nurses increasingly use social media to communicate work-related experiences. This review mapped the evidence on occupational distress represented in nurse-generated social media content, its main dimensions and organizational sources, and the role of social media in professional expression and self-representation. Methods: A scoping review was conducted according to Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and reported following PRISMA-ScR guidance. PubMed, CINAHL Complete, and Scopus were searched. Primary qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies analyzing social media content attributed to nurses according to the procedures reported in the primary studies were eligible. Findings were synthesized descriptively and narratively. Results: Nine articles published between 2018 and 2023 were included. They examined blogs, Facebook, professional nursing websites, Sina Microblog/Weibo, Twitter, Instagram, AllNurses, and Reddit using qualitative, mixed-methods, and computational approaches. Occupational distress and relevant work-related experiences were represented through psychological and emotional, physical, social/family, and professional-organizational manifestations. Nurses’ social media narratives included expressions of occupational distress and adjacent work-related constructs, such as stress, burnout, emotional exhaustion, anxiety, frustration, anger, and isolation. Recurrent organizational factors included staffing shortages, excessive workload, insufficient resources, workplace violence, limited professional autonomy, inadequate recognition, compensation and rights, professional agency, safety, and organizational support. Most evidence was generated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media was also represented as spaces for narration of professional experiences, support, public communication and advocacy, and professional self-representation. Conclusions: Nurse-generated social media content provides a complementary perspective on how occupational distress is experienced, interpreted, and communicated outside researcher-defined settings. The available evidence remains limited, heterogeneous, and strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media content represents situated digital narratives rather than a representative proxy for the nursing workforce and does not support inferences about prevalence or causality. More geographically diverse, post-pandemic, and methodologically integrated research using independent datasets is needed.