Analyze Impact of Occupational Stress in Healthcare Professionals: A Critical Review

In an era of industrialization, globalizations and technology development employees are expected to work more keenly and deliver their services successfully. Being exposed to stress for too long, may lower a person's efficiency and could have a negative impact on one's health, family and social life. Professions that include human exposure and expeditious decision-making skills are the most stressful professions. Healthcare profession is among one of those demanding and stressful professions. Healthcare professionals have to deal with different types of patients who are not only physically ill and suffering a considerable degree of stress as well as different in their mind set also. Healthcare professionals are required to respond to the needs of the patients and their families very quickly as any delay in response may put the lives of patients into danger which may sometimes irreversible. In order to provide the quality services to the patients, it becomes necessary that the consultants, nursing staff and other medical staff must be in a perfect state of mind free from all anxieties. As Healthcare profession is inherently a stressful profession due to long and odd working hours and exposure to severe disease, the health care workers are more prone to abuse and suicide than other professions. In conjunction to psychological stress, other consequences of occupational distress incorporate high staff turnover, absenteeism due to sickness, burnout, decreased quality of services provided to patients, increased costs of healthcare, decreased job satisfaction and diagnosis & treatment errors. This calls for instant interference in order to address its surge and to stimulate mental well being of consultants, staff nurses and other medical staff. The objective of this study is to recognize the origin of occupational stress among healthcare professionals, to identify the adverse effects of stress and to make recommendations to reduce occupational stress among healthcare professionals.