Levels of job stress and influencing factors among medical and health professionals

Abstract

Objective To evaluate levels of job stress and its influencing factors among medical staff in hospitals and health personnels in centers for disease control and prevention.Methods Job Content Questionnaire was self-administered to evaluate the job stress level among 1 859 doctors and medical technicians,1 444 nurses,and 684 public health workers selected with multistage cluster random sampling in Liaoning province.Logistic regression was applied to elucidate the influencing factors of the prevalence of high-strain and passive job.Results High prevalence of job stress existed among the medical and health professionals.Over 50％ of the professionals reported high-strain and passivity in their job,which were strongly associated with job burnout,with a higher prevalence rate 57.9％ (833/1 440) in the nurses,a moderate level 53.6％ (367/684) in the staffs of centers for disease control and prevention,and a lower prevalence rate 44.9％ (835/1 859) in the doctors.Doctors and nurses had no significant difference in job demand.The staffs of centers for disease control and prevention had the lowest job demand compared with doctors and nurses.There were significant differences in job freedom among these three groups,with nurses had the lowest,and doctors the highest.Multivariate logistic regression showed that the influencing factors for high-work-demand and low-work-freedom include dissatisfaction to salary,the non-patient,work overload,and working in urban areas.Conclusion Nurses had the greatest job stress.The staffs of centers for disease control and prevention and doctors were the second and third groups.Transparency and fairness of the payment system based on contribution may be effective to relieve job stress among medical and health professionals. Key words: Medical staff; Job stress; Job content questionnaire