Stress in Health Professionals : Psychological and Organizational Causes and Interventions

Stress levels in health professionals have been shown to be high inmany countries and in most staff groups. This creates a personalcost to the individuals concerned, a financial cost to theorganisations in terms of absence, early retirement and complaints,and a health cost to patients in terms of the risk of poorerquality care that is received by patients from stressed ordissatisfied staff. At a time when health organisations worldwideare striving to reduce costs and to increase quality, addressingthe psychological well-being of their staff has necessarily risenhigh on their priorities. Stress in Health Professionals reports onthe latest research from around the world on the causes of stressin health professionals and on ways to intervene to reduce stresslevels. In doing this, it takes approaches from organisational andclinical psychology to focus on key staff groups. It considerswider issues such as burn-out, teamwork, training and counsellingservices and investigates the effectiveness of both organisationaland individual interventions. Written by experts from a broad rangeof areas, the chapters include: * the latest evidence on the levels and sources of stress in healthstaff * links between stress and patient care Individual differences inthe 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, healthprofessionals, trainers and health organisations, and also forthose involved in research in this important area of individual andorganisational 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 thechapters should be required reading for professional, strategic andoperational line managers concerned with designing effective workenvironme