Occupational Stress in the Healthcare Workplace for Psychology

Question: Discuss about theOccupational Stress in the Healthcare Workplace for Psychology. Answer: 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 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 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 Organizations 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). 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, Marin 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 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. References Adriaenssens, J., De Gucht, V., Maes, S. (2015). 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