Stress and well­being in health­care staff: the role of negative affectivity, and perceptions of job demand and discretion

✍ Scribed by Tyler, Patrick ;Cushway, Delia

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 141 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0748-8386
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1700(199804)14:2<99::aid-smi766>3.0.co;2-1

✦ Synopsis

A questionnaire survey was administered to volunteer sta from the Surgical and Mental Health Directorates of an English hospital district. The aim was to investigate the relationships between job stressors, coping strategies, job satisfaction and well-being, in light of Karasek's demand±discretion model. The eects of controlling for age, gender and negative aectivity were also of interest. After controlling for these factors, there was found to be no interaction between job demand and discretion for either job satisfaction or psychological distress, so Karasek's model was not supported. Both job dissatisfaction and psychological distress were found to be in¯uenced by lack of resources, while perception of demand was strongly in¯uenced by workload; these were also the stressors that dierentiated the two hospital directorates, with the surgical sta suering higher levels of both. Controlling for negative aectivity had a stronger in¯uence on the measure of distress than on job satisfaction and the two outcome measures were not interchangeable. Recommendations centred on improving structural conditions, especially for surgical sta, and on reducing levels of anxiety and hostility by promoting stress management.