Individual differences and stress-performance relationship.

BACKGROUND: Medicine is a high risk profession. Infectious diseases, dealing with difficult patients, accidents on the job, and other hazards have shortened the careers of many practitioners. The extent to which they experience stress turns into poor performance in terms of quality of patient care. Personality traits are often thought to affect the stress that a person perceives. Specific types of personalities seem to be more susceptible to the effects of stress than others. Job performance is associated with different levels of stress. The purpose of the present study was to investigate any effect of job stress on job performance and effect of personality type on the stress-performance relationship. METHODS: All 55 house officers enrolled at Ayub Teaching Hospital at the time of study were included in the study. Primary data was gathered through questionnaire designed to address personality type and to gathered information about job stress and performance. Individual semi-structured interviews and observations were used to collect information in order to find out how the work patterns have been influenced by environmental factors. The data obtained through questionnaire was analysed using the statistical methods including descriptive statistics, Spearman's correlation and multiple regression. RESULTS: The results indicated that Type A individuals tend to experience more stress than Type B, however no major statistical differences were found. Type A individuals performed slightly better than Type B. CONCLUSION: Identification of house officers' personality traits will be helpful in assessing stress and designing different stress coping strategies to reduce their level of stress and improve their performance. The correlation between job stress and job performance among house officers with Type A personality characteristics is high.

Occupational stress and its effect on job performance. A case study of medical house officers of district Abbottabad.

BACKGROUND: Doctors especially house officers are under a great deal of stress related to a variety of occupational stressors. Occupational stressors contribute to organizational inefficiency, high staff turnover, absenteeism due to sickness, decreased quality, and quantity of practice, increased costs of health care, and decreased job satisfaction. One of the organizational outcomes that affected by occupational stress is job performance. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of job stress on job performance. METHODS: The universe of the study is District Abbottabad and the complete population of house officers was targeted which were present at that time were 55. The data obtained through questionnaire was analyzed using the statistical methods including descriptive statistics, Spearman's correlation and multiple regression. RESULTS: The analysis showed strong support for the hypothesis that there is an inverse relationship between job stress and job performance indicating that there is high job stress in the house officers, resulting in low job performance. CONCLUSION: Correct stress management should start from improved health and good intrapersonal relationships. The prevention and management of workplace stress requires organizational level interventions, because it is the organization that creates the stress. Success in managing and preventing stress will depend on the culture in the organization. A culture of openness and understanding, rather than of criticism, is essential. Those house officers who had high level of job stress had low job performance. All the factors affected male house officers more than the female house officers.