Occupational Stress among Emergency Department (ED) Staff and the Need for Investment in Health Care; a View from Pakistan.

Aims: To identify the frequency of occupational stress and its contributing factors (stressors) existing among healthcare providers working in the Emergency Department (ED) of tertiary care hospitals of Karachi. Study Design: This is a descriptive cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Emergency Department of public and private tertiary care hospitals located in Karachi. The study was conducted for a period of five months from February to June 2013. Methodology: A sample of 120 health care providers in Emergency Departments including doctors and nurses were included in the study (60 doctors, 60 nurses 30 each from public and private tertiary care hospitals). Self administered questionnaire with three parts was used to collect data. The first part pertained to demographics, the second part was adopted from Workplace Stress Scale (WSS) while the third part contained an inventory of Emergency Worker Stress. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 16 (SPSS) and MS excel software 2010 were used for data analysis and presentation. Results: Of the 120 participants including doctors and nurses, 35.8% had ‘Moderate’ level of occupational stress as per Work Stress Scale (WSS). 28.3% were found to have ‘Severe’ level of occupational stress. Significant association was found between levels of stress & hospital status (P- value 0.002) & Work hours in ER (P- value 0.0001). Among the association between occupational stress and ER related stressors, significant moderate association was found with overall stress score and wok responsibility category (r=0.697 & r=0.675 respectively) Conclusion: Health care providers from Emergency Department are under immense stress and workload. This level of stress is likely to lead to more mistakes by the ED staff and general dissatisfaction at workplace. It is important to reassess the system’s flaws and minimize workload and stress among Emergency care providers for a better health care experience.