Stress in Health Professionals Psychological and Organisational Causes and Interventions

by Firth-Cozens, Jenny; Payne, Roy L.

• ISBN13: 9780471998761
• ISBN10: 0471998761
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-10
• Publisher: WILEY

Summary

Stress levels in health professionals have been shown to be high in many countries and in most staff groups. This creates a personal cost to the individuals concerned, a financial cost to the organisations in terms of absence, early retirement and complaints, and a health cost to patients in terms of the risk of poorer quality care that is received by patients from stressed or dissatisfied staff. At a time when health organisations worldwide are striving to reduce costs and to increase quality, addressing the psychological well-being of their staff has necessarily risen high on their priorities. Stress in Health Professionals reports on the latest research from around the world on the causes of stress in health professionals and on ways to intervene to reduce stress levels. In doing this, it takes approaches from organisational and clinical psychology to focus on key staff groups. It considers wider issues such as burn-out, teamwork, training and counselling services and investigates the effectiveness of both organisational and individual interventions. Written by experts from a broad range of areas, the chapters include: the latest evidence on the levels and sources of stress in health staff links between stress and patient care Individual differences in the stress process ways to set up counselling services the importance of teamworking a strong focus on interventions and their evaluation This volume is an important resource for managers, health professionals, trainers and health organisations, and also for those involved in research in this important area of individual and organisational well being. "The book can be recommended as a resource for health providers, managers researchers involved in the field of work stress..." International Journal of Adolescent Medicine Health "This is an excellent book to have in your library and many of the chapters should be required reading for professional, strategic and operational line managers concerned with designing effective work environments." Clinical Child Psychology & Psychiatry

Author Biography

Jenny Firth-Cozens is an occupational and clinical psychologist and Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology who has worked at all levels of the health service and within academia. She has published numerous reports and several books, both academic and popular, including Stress in Health Professionals: Psychological and organizational causes and interventions and Nervous Breakdown: What is it? What causes it? Who will help?, which was a book club choice for many years. In addition she has contributed articles to most leading newspapers and magazines and for 10 years was agony aunt for Good Housekeeping and The Yorkshire Post.

Roy L. Payne graduated in psychology at Liverpool University and has spent most of his career as a researcher and teacher in business schools and psychology departments in the UK. He is currently Professor of Organizational Psychology at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia. His work has led to publications in major international journals on organizational structure and climate/culture, and he has also published extensively in the occupational stress area. These remain active areas of interest, as well as more recent work on trust in organizations.

Table of Contents

About the editors	ix
About the authors	xi
Preface	xvii
Part I Issues in studying stress
Stress at work: a conceptual framework	3	(14)
Roy Payne
Burnout	17	(16)
Wilmar Schaufeli
Individual differences in the job stress process of health care professionals	33	(10)
Paul E. Spector
Psychological and physiological aspects of stress	43	(20)
Joe Herbert
Fallibility, uncertainty and the impact of mistakes and litigation	63	(16)
Charles Vincent
Part II The professions and their stress
The psychological problems of doctors	79	(14)
Jenny Firth-Cozens
Nursing	93	(12)
Pamela J. Baldwin
Health service managers	105	(14)
Carol Borrill
Clare Haynes
Stress in ambulance personnel	119	(14)
Kathryn M. Young
Cary L. Cooper
Child protection workers	133	(16)
Tricia Cresswell
Jenny Firth-Cozens
Part III Interventions for stress
Organisational interventions to reduce stress in health care professionals	149	(14)
Lawrence R. Murphy
Stress and interventions for stress in general practitioners	163	(14)
John Howie
Mike Porter
Stress in the nursing department: learnings from an executive team retreat	177	(14)
Larry Hirschhorn
Linda May
Sharing the burden: teamwork in health care settings	191	(12)
Angela J. Carter
Michael A. West
Getting things right for the doctor in training	203	(16)
Fiona Moss
Elisabeth Paice
Doctors in trouble	219	(12)
Robert Hale
Liam Hudson
Setting up a workplace counselling service	231	(16)
Til Wykes
Richard Whittington
Psychotherapeutic interventions for work stress	247	(14)
Gillian E. Hardy
Michael Barkham
Index	261