The objective of this study was to reveal the present situation of organizational stress among employees of three major hospitals in Ankara, Turkey. Also to direct executives and individuals to the means to cope with organizational stress encouraging focusing the etiologies and promoting productive and functional service capabilities supplementing ever increasing literature and state of knowledge. Methodologically, the study was conducted on 699 subjects, selected randomly utilizing the ‘Organizational Stress Measure’ questionnaire. The results indicated that there was no significant variance of stress levels between samples obtained from three different hospitals. However; in the Social Security Hospital there was significant difference in stress levels of executives, health personnel, allied health personnel and the group of employees indicated as others, with highest mean stress levels in the group defined as others followed by executives, health personnel and allied health personnel. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between stress levels of different sexes and no correlation of age factor with stress. If high organizational stress is the case in an institution a change in strategy that includes structural and organizational change will be necessary. Such change will improve the productivity of employees. By doing so, menagerial costs of job stress will also be diminished. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.