Psychiatrists and occupational stress

Abstract

Objectives:

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the psychiatrists' stress factors related to their work in order to find methods that could improve the work environment.

Method:

A 30 items questionnaire was designed for the study, based on discussions with the trainees and psychiatrists and reviewing articles related to this topic. Each item was quantified from 0 to 9, 0 meaning “ no stress”, and 9 meaning the highest level of stress. The questionnaire was distributed to 200 psychiatrists (72% response rate) from 5 university centers in Romania. The results were analyzed, using the SPSS medical statistic program.

Results:

The majority of the respondents were young psychiatrists, in their first 2 years of practice. Even if most of the fellow psychiatrists do not consider themselves stressed at work, they reported high level of stress at several items. The major causes of stress are: “ the lack of space in the clinic”, “insufficient equipment”, “lack of drugs”. The items with the lowest scores, meaning that there are not stress factors are: ”too much work on emergency room”, “working extra-hours”, “doing somebody else's job”.

Conclusion:

All 5 universities reported the same causes of stress as being the most frequent ; these factors are correlated more with economical problems then with medical ones. This reflects the economical status of our country. The stress level can be reduced through economical and administrative measures.