Perceived Stress Levels and Its Sources Among Doctors and Nurses Working in A Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital, Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu

Authors

  • Narayanan Sathiya SRM University, Chennai
  • Rafeeq Ruwaidha SRM University, Chennai
  • Farooq Salma Nusrath SRM University, Chennai
  • Farin Fathima SRM University, Chennai
  • Thandavamoorthy Gomathy SRM University, Chennai
  • Hegde Kumar Shailendra Economics & Management, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Keywords:

Doctors, Nurses, Stress scores, Sources of stress

Abstract

Introduction: Stress and emotional disturbances among doctors and nurses are relatively common, and seemingly, this is a worldwide problem. Recently studies have reported high levels of stress among health care professionals. This study was done to assess prevalence of perceived stress and its sources among doctors and nurses.

Methodology: Cross-sectional study was conducted among 200 study subjects (84 doctors & 116 nursing staff) by simple random sampling. Perceived stress scale (PSS 10) questionnaire was used to assess stress scores. Work environment, health related and psycho-social stressors were assessed using a 16 items questionnaire. MS Excel sheet and SPSS were used for data entering and statistical analysis.

Results: Prevalence of stress among study participants was found to be 39.5% (79). Mean PSS score among doctors was found to be 18.35 (±4.7) and the same among nurses was 17.16 (±5.5). Inadequacy of staff and resources, sleep deprivation, confronting constant emotional smoking physical suffering were found as important stressors.

Conclusions: This study identified that doctors and nurses do face considerable amount of stress at workplace. Appropriate coping strategies must be adopted by them to cope up with this stress.

References

Baba I. Workplace Stress among doctors in government hospital: An empirical study. Int J Multidisc Res. 2012 May;2(5):208-20.

Zimbardo PG. Psychology and Life (12th ed.). Glenview, IL:Scott, Foresman;1988.

Guide-lines for protecting the Health and Safety of Health Care Worker. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No 88-119;1988 Sept.

Burbeck R, Coomber S, Robinson SM, Todd C. Occupa-tional stress in consultants in accident and emergency medicine: a national survey of levels of stress at work. Emerg Med J 2002;19:234-8.

JLM Lindo, McCaw-Binns A, J LaGrenade, M Jackson, D Eldemire-Shearer. Mental well-being of doctors and nurs-es in two hospitals in Kingston, Jamaica.West Indian Med J.2006 June;55(3)

Felton JS. Burnout as a clinical entity-its importance in healthcare workers. Occup Med (Lond) 1998;48: 237-50.

Gianakos I. Gender Roles and Coping with work stress. Sex Roles. Jun 2000;42(11/12):1-13.

Wong JG. Doctors and Stress. The Hong Kong Medical Diary. 2008 June;13(6):4–7.

Cooper CL, Rout U, Faragher B. Mental health, Job Satis-faction and Job Stress among general practitioners. BMJ. Feb 1989;298(6670):366-70.

Burke RJ, Richardsen AM. Sources of satisfaction and stress among Canadian physicians. Psychol Rep Dec 1990;67 (3 Pt 2):1335–44.

Gestal JJ. Occupational hazards in hospitals such as ac-cidents, radiation, exposure to noxious chemicals, drug addiction and psychic problems and assault. Br J Ind Med Aug 1987;44(8):510-20.

McNamee R, Keen RI, Corkill CM. Morbidity and early retirement among anaesthetists and other specialities. Anaesthesia Feb 1987;42(2):133-40.

British Medical Association. Stress and the medical pro-fession, London: BMA 2000

Thangaraj S, D’Souza L. Prevalence of Stress Levels Among First Year Medical Undergraduate Students. IJIMS 2014; 1(5): 176-181.

Gupta A, Koolwal GD, Gehlot S. Study of perceived stress and emotional intelligence among 1st year medical undergraduates in India. J Contemp Med Edu 2014; 2(1): 63-67.

Brahmbhatt KR, Nadeera VP,Prasanna KS, Jayram S. Perceived stress and sources of stress among medical undergraduates in a private Medical College in Manga-lore, India. Int J of Biomed & Adv Res 2013; 4(2): 129-136.

Palekar TJ, Mokashi MG. Perceived Stress, Sources and Severity of Stress among Physiotherapy Students in an Indian College. Ind J of Physiotherapy & Occup Therapy-An Int J 2013;7(3): 128-133.

Supe AN. A study of stress in medical students at Seth G.S. Medical College. J Postgrad Med 1998; 44:1-6.

Sharma B, Prasad S, Pandey R, Singh J, Sodhi KS, Wadhwa D. Evaluation of Stress among Post-graduate Medical and Dental Students: A pilot study. Delhi psych J 2013Oct; 16(2): 313-315.

Swami MK, Mathur BK, Pushp BK. Emotional intelli-gence, perceived stress and burnout among resident doc-tors: An assessment of the relationship. The National Med J of Ind 2013; 26(4): 210-213.

Shoba G, Lakshmi A. A Study on Job Stress among Pri-vate Medical Practitioners in Vellore district, Tamil Nadu. Asian J of Sci Res 2014;7(4);488-500.

Shreedevi D. Stress Management among health care pro-fessionals. Int J Res Bus Manag. 2013 Aug;1(3):37-48.

Cohen S, Kamarck T, Mermelstein R: A global measure of perceived stress. J Health Soc Behav 1983, 24:385-96.

Cohen S, Williamson G: Perceived stress in a probability sample of the United States. The Social Psychology of Health: Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psy-chology Newbury Park, CA: SageSpacapam S, Oskamp S 1988, 31-67.

Hall NC, Chipperfield JG, Perry RP, Ruthig JC, Goetz T: Primary and secondary control in academic development: gender-specific implications for stress and health in col-lege students. Anxiety Stress Coping 2006, 19:189-210.

Ayon MA. The Effects of Holistic Coping Strategies on Perceived Stress and Absenteeism in Hospital Nurses. ScholarWorks 2014 Dec

Shah M, Hasan S, Malik S, Sreeramareddy CT. Perceived Stress, Sources and Severity of Stress among medical un-dergraduates in a Pakistani Medical School. BMC Medi-cal Education. 2010;10:2. doi:10.1186/1472-6920-10-2.

Abdulghani HM. Stress and depression among medical students: a cross sectional study at a College in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan J of Med Sci Quarterly 2008; 24(1):12-17.

Saipanish R. Stress among medical students in a Thai medical school.Med Teach 2003; 25:502-6.

Safaeian M, Esmaeilinasab M. Comparison of spiritual intelligence, job stress and coping styles between nurses and doctors. Bull. Env. Pharmacol. Life Sci., Vol 3 (Spl is-sue II) 2014: 233-237.

Gallagher CT, Mehta ANV, Selvan R, Mirza IB, Radia P, Bharadia NS et al. Currents in Pharm teaching &Learning 2014 May; 6(3): 437-441.

Mosadeghrad AM, Ferlie E, Rosenberg D. A study of rela-tionship between job stress, quality of working life and turnover intention among hospital employees. Health Serv Manage Res 2011 Nov;24(4):170-81.

Menon A, Munalula B, Glazebrook C. Stress in Doctors: A Pilot study of the University Teaching Hospi-tal,Lusaka,Zambia. J of Psych in Afr 2007 17(1): 137-140.

Thian JHM, Kannusamy p, He H, Klainin-Yobas P. Rela-tionships among Stress, Positive Affectivity, and Work Engagement among Registered Nurses[Online].2015 Feb 11.

Isikhan V, Comez T, Danis MZ. Job stress and coping strategies in health care professionals working with cancer patients. Eur J Oncol Nurs. 2004 Sep;8(3):234-44.

Downloads

Published

2016-07-31

How to Cite

1.
Sathiya N, Ruwaidha R, Nusrath FS, Fathima F, Gomathy T, Shailendra HK. Perceived Stress Levels and Its Sources Among Doctors and Nurses Working in A Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital, Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu. Natl J Community Med [Internet]. 2016 Jul. 31 [cited 2024 Apr. 27];7(07):603-8. Available from: https://njcmindia.com/index.php/file/article/view/1013

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 07 (2016)

Section

Original Research Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The authors retain the copyright of their article, with first publication rights granted to Medsci Publications.