Occupational Stress in the Healthcare Workplace

This article discusses occupational stress in the healthcare workplace, its causes, effects, legislative requirements, and standard industry practices to minimize it. It also explores how stress manifests itself in the healthcare field and how it may cause harm. The subject is relevant to healthcare professionals, students pursuing healthcare courses, and anyone interested in occupational health and safety. No course code, course name, or college/university mentioned.

Running head: OCCUPATIONAL STRESS IN THE HEALTHCARE WORKPLACE
Occupational Stress in the Healthcare Workplace
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Occupational Stress in the Healthcare Workplace
Introduction
Healthcare professionals do a phenomenal job at ensuring that individuals receive the
best care. They deal with varied cases each day. Sometimes, they work for long hours due to
many patients/clients. As many other people, health professionals also experience stress
while at work. Stress is state where there is emotional or mental straining brought about by
extreme or demanding circumstances (Baum, 2016). While stress has been an issue that
people must deal with throughout history, stress among health professionals has uniqueness.
The causes of stress are referred to as stressors. In the contemporary society there are newer
and unique stressors in the field of health. This means that although healthcare professionals
experienced stress even in the 20th century and before, the kind of stressors keep evolving
with time. The 21st century has seen great technological advancement in many fields
including the healthcare field. This has brought great benefits but also negative ones such as
stress. As Selye (2013) observes, occupational health and safety of workers is key in
determining their output. This review is going to look at stress in the healthcare field/sector.
More precisely, the following are going to be discussed: how stress manifests itself in this
field and how it may cause harm, legislative requirements relating to stress among healthcare
workers and standard industry practice relating to minimization of stress.
How stress manifests itself in the healthcare field
There are different workers in the healthcare sector. These include doctors, nurses,
pharmacists, nutritionists and medical technologists. During their work, these members of the
healthcare team may experience stress in various ways and due to various reasons. According
to Roberts, Sim, Black and Smith (2015), one of the ways in which stress manifests itself is

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through difficulty in staying focused and poor problem-solving skills. This is a situation that
may result where a healthcare professional works for long hours without taking a break.
Sometimes the job is too demanding leading to such kind of working. When a healthcare
professional works for long hours without taking a rest, they develop fatigue. It is the
continuous state of being in fatigue that causes stress leading to poor problem-solving skills
and difficulty in staying focused.
Another common way through which stress manifests itself among healthcare workers
is through drug and substance abuse. Drug and substance abuse refers to regular consumption
of such substances as alcohol, heroine, cocaine and smoking tobacco. When this happens
regularly, addiction may result. With addiction, it becomes a very difficult task to quit
abusing the drugs. Certain working factors may lead to stress compelling a healthcare worker
to abuse drugs. These include continuously having high loads of work, dealing with patients
who are dying/the terminally ill and insufficient preparation to handle the job demands
(Adriaenssens, Gucht, and Maes, 2015). Drug abuse leads to a contemporary feeling of
pleasure but once cleared from the body, the initial status resumes and may be worse this
time. This a main indicator of stress and may lead to other negative behaviours such
absenteeism from work, deterioration of performance and inability to beat deadlines.
The third and final way through which stress may manifest itself among healthcare
workers is through deteriorating of their health. Extensive research has shown that there
exists a relationship between stress and weakening of the immune system (Nowrouzi et al,
2015). When the immune system become weak, an individual is more prone to disease
causing pathogens. They are therefore at an increased risk for infections. This explains how
the deterioration of health status occurs (Siegrist and Wahrendorf, 2016). Increased levels of
stress (chronic stress) has been implicated in development of some mental disorders such as
depression. As indicated by Lovallo (2015), in extreme cases it may lead to adverse

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conditions such as heart attack and stroke. As such, stress is an important occupational health
issue in the healthcare workplace.
Legislative requirements relating to the health hazard.
The Work Safety Act of Australia provides some legislation relating to stress in the
workplace. The legislation revolves around occupational health and safety. It requires that
employers provide their workers a conducive environment that is free from risks and that
poses no risks to health (Work Safe Act, 2010). The legislation further requires that
employees identify such risks and eliminate them so far as is reasonably practicable. In cases
where it is not possible to eliminate the risk, the legislation requires that it be minimised so
far as is reasonably practicable. In making such a move, employers are obliged to consult the
employees who are most likely affected by the hazard (stress in this case). The work safety
representative should also be involved in making such a move. A committee concerned with
workplace safety may also come up with/support measures put in place to minimise stressors
and ultimately stress in the workplace.
In addition, this legislation puts some obligation to the employees. They should
ensure that they take reasonable care of themselves. To achieve this, they should strive to
make sure that neither their acts nor omission pose health risks to them or to others. The
legislation has adopted the World Health Organization’s definition of stress resulting from
job/work. Stress resulting from work is defined as demands and pressures that workers may
have to cope with and that are not within their ability to cope or are challenging to cope with.
Stress may result from a variety of work related issues, but it only becomes worse in situation
where workers feel that they are receiving little/no support from their seniors/management or
in cases where they have very little control over work or challenges in coping with the
demands and pressures (stressors).

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Standard industry practice relating to minimisation of stress
As seen above, the healthcare environment poses some stressors to healthcare
workers. A work environment that is stressful make the workers stressed. When healthcare
workers are stressed, there are some techniques that they commonly use to deal with the
stressors. These standard practices are going to be discussed next. When stressed up and there
are still more demands such as more clients who need their help, health workers may exploit
the available social mechanisms of dealing with stress (Khamisa, Peltzer, Ilic, and Oldenburg,
2016). Such measures include finding support from their colleagues at work or other
members of staff.
Another way through which healthcare workers may deal with stress and situations
that are stressing is to try and take control of the situation rather than talk to their colleagues.
Taking control includes taking certain measures such as adopting positive thinking, forming a
culture of exercising and engaging in recreational activities. According to Greenberg
(2017), the goal of engaging in such activities is to increase their ability to comply with the
causes of stress. This implies psychological, physical and the psychological ability.
Another common way of dealing with stress at healthcare workplace environment is
through avoidance of the stressor (Brough, Drummond and Biggs, 2018). In such cases, the
worker endeavours in as much as is possible on their side to keep away from anything that
causes the stressful situation. In some instances, this is combined with some religious
practices that reduce stress and increase the level of inner peace. Since different workers have
different religious backgrounds, these practices are different for various healthcare workers
(Ruotsalainen, Verbeek, Mariné and Serra, 2018).
In addition to the practices mentioned above, the personality traits of individual
healthcare workers appear to significantly influence their strategies of coping with stress. For

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instance, a healthcare worker with patience as a personality trait will cope more effectively
with stress when compared to another who is hasty and quick to anger. Every person has a
unique personality, and this too will influence how they cope with stress.
Conclusion
Stress is an occupational health hazard that is common in many work environments.
The causes of stress in the healthcare sector has evolved with time. Stress manifests itself in
various way among the healthcare workers. These include: having trouble staying focused
and poor problem-solving skills, drug and substance abuse and deteriorating health. If left
unmonitored, these effects of stress may lead to unpleasant consequences such as
absenteeism from job and health conditions such as depression, heart attack and stroke. Being
a very important occupational health hazard, there are legislation in place regarding stress. In
Australia, these are found in the Work Safety Act. Amongst other requirements, the act
obliges employers to ensure that the work environment poses no health risks to employees. It
also tasks the employees to ensure that neither their acts nor omissions causes health risks to
themselves or to others.
The standard industry practice relating to stress in the healthcare work environment is
wide and varies from place to place. The common ways of dealing with stress among the
healthcare workers include sharing about their stressful situations with their colleague.
Another way of coping includes self-measures such as recreation and exercise. The self-
measures are aimed at strengthening the worker both physically, mentally and
psychologically to cope with the stressful situations. In addition, the personality and personal
traits of individual healthcare workers determine their ability to cope with stress. For
instance, a person with the trait of patience copes better than a person with the trait of
hastiness and who quickly becomes angry.

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References
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Baum, F. (2016). The new public health (No. Ed. 4). Oxford University Press.
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Greenberg, J. S. (2017). Comprehensive stress management. McGraw-Hill Education.
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