Work Related Stress and its Effect on Mental Health among employees of Ain Shams University Hospitals

Abstract

Abstract Background Work related stress reduces the overall mental and physical wellbeing of employees. Workers in health industry are more prone to work stress than any other workplace. Many researches were conducted among health-care professionals, but not among hospital employees who are not involved in the direct patient’s care. Objectives This study was aiming to measure the prevalence of work related stress among employees of Ain Shams University Hospitals, to determine its risk factors and to measure its effect on the occurrence of depression, anxiety and stress. Method A cross-sectional study was conducted upon a sample of employees in Ain Shams University Hospitals, working in the same job for at least one year and not involved in direct patient’s care. Employees were interviewed using the “workplace stress scale”, the “Depression Anxiety Stress Scale DASS-21”, and the “socioeconomic status scale for health research in Egypt” by El-Gilany. Results The study included 462 participants, their age ranged from 18 to 59 years (mean ± SD: 43.4 ± 10.9), 171(37%) were males and 291 (63%) were females, and the majority were in the middle and high social class (79.2% and 16.9%) respectively). Most of the employee experienced work-related stress: 40 (87.7%) of them, the moderate, severe, and dangerous levels were 32.3%, 22.5% and 7.6% respectively. Work-related stress was significantly associated with job category with engineers were the least stressed (50%) and workers were the most (94.1%). The majority of participants suffered any of the three mental ill-health and the frequency of depression, anxiety and stress (312 (67.5), 319 (69.0) and 239 (51.7) respectively). Severe/extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety and stress were observed among 20.8%, 34.6% and 17.6% of participants respectively. Work related stress was significantly associated with the three mental ill-health status. Conclusion This study revealed a high level of workrelated stress among hospital employee who are not involved in patient’s care with around fifth of them suffered severe levels of mental ill-health. Occupational stress resulted mainly from inadequate control over work duties and unpleasant or unsafe work conditions.