Linkages between workplace stressors and quality of care from health professionals' perspective – Macedonian experience

Abstract

What is already known on this subject? Psychosocial stress at work among health professionals is often present and well studied, but relations between job stress and quality of care were rarely examined. Job demands-resources model by Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner and Schaufeli (2001), for assessment of job stress includes job demands (working environment, work overload, time pressures, recipient contact, shift work) and job resources (feedback, rewards, job control, participation, job security, supervisor support) was applied in different studies. There is scientific evidence that burned-out physicians have shown depersonalization from their patients, they have withdrawn from patients, demonstrated sub-optimal care, and sometimes burnout has been related to serious mistakes and patient death. Different research has shown that some workplace factors contributed to the development of work-related stress and burnout among HPs whereas others contributed protectively. What does this study add? Similar and overlapping workplace factors in hospital setting produce stress in health professionals and influence quality of care. Impact of specific socioeconomic environment in Macedonia as a country in transition and EU candidate country on job stress among health professionals and quality of care. Development of criteria and recommendations for the job stress prevention and improvement of the organizational culture and climate in hospital settings.

Key worklife areas contributing to health care burnout: Reflections on the ORCAB project

“…Subsequent research, some of it using the Areas of Worklife Scale (Leiter & Maslach, 2011), confirmed the relevance of these six areas in describing the characteristics of work experience that differ between environments conducive to burnout and those conducive to work engagement. I was struck when reading the reports in this series to see the relevance of these six areas of worklife to the challenges facing people working in and receiving services from European health care systems in 2014 (as seen in Karadzinska-Bislimovska et al, 2014;McGowan, Humphries, Burke, Conry, & Morgan, 2014;Milosevic, Brborovic, Mustajbegovic, & Montgomery, 2014 and others).…”

The Relationship Between Fatigue and Job Burnout Dimensions in Hospital Nurses

“…In comparison with other occupations, healthcare personnel (especially physicians, nurses, and healthcare assistants) are more prone to burnout due to their exposure to stressors including: thanatophobia (12); interpersonal problems (13); low social support (14); verbal and physical aggression and violence (15,16); poor hospital work environments (17); high workload (18); high number of patients per day (19); decision-making in emergency situations (based on insufficient information) and accepting responsibility for the consequences (20); exertion along with mental pressure to avoid any mistakes (21); and rotating shift work, particularly night work (22). Farsi et al (2014) conducted a study at Army University of Medical Sciences (AJA) hospitals of Tehran, Iran and showed that quality of nurses' working life was reversely related to EE and DPA (23).…”

Psychosocial support and resilience building among health workers in Sierra Leone: interrelations between coping skills, stress levels, and interpersonal relationships

“…While it is difficult to change some factors in low resource settings such as drug stock-outs, lack of training and poor infrastructure, providing existing health workers with coping and stress management techniques to persevere within these difficult environments and manage their emotional health can potentially have an impact on health service delivery and quality of care [14]. Resilience is one such tool, and is particularly important in remote areas and in countries like Sierra Leone where health worker shortages are dire, job satisfaction and motivation are poor, financial incentives are lacking and bottlenecks to quality care are numerous.…”

“…Resilience, namely the ability to handle stress in a healthy and adaptive way, is a major factor in health worker well-being [13]. Stress can impact the functioning of the health system as a whole with respect to retention, performance, productivity, safety, demand and quality of care [14], and has an overall impact on health worker job satisfaction levels [15]. Teaching stress management and coping skills can prevent burnout, a condition caused by long-term, perpetual stress that leads to emotional exhaustion and one’s diminishing sense of purpose and self [16,17].…”

“…Teaching stress management and coping skills can prevent burnout, a condition caused by long-term, perpetual stress that leads to emotional exhaustion and one’s diminishing sense of purpose and self [16,17]. Furthermore, improved interactions among co-workers have been shown to be associated with stress reduction [14]. The WHO also defined strengthening of social relationships among health workers as a health promotion strategy linked to quality of care [12].…”