Mental Health Care of Medical Workers / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

  Recently, workplace stress has increasingly become a major health problem in hospitals, because of a whirlwind of technologial innovation, longer working hours stemming from a manpower shortage, lawsuit jitters over compensation for medical accidents, etc. Thus, the number of medical workers with stress-related diseases has increased greatly.  Four panelists reported the mental health care activities tried in their hospitals. The activities included counseling and/or support for psychosomatically disordered workers, to return to work.  Medical institutions in Japan are far behind from other industries in mental health care of hospital employees. Such being the situation, the government as well as hospital owners are called upon to introduce stress-management measures to help medical workers including burned-out employed doctors and nurses to cope with workplace stress.