An Assessment of Occupational Stress, Job Satisfaction and Coping Strategies among Dentists in Damascus, Syria

Background: Dentistry is understood to be a stressful profession. Aims: (1) To distinguish grounds of stress can help preventing associated adverse effects. (2) To assess the association of various personal and work related factors with general stress. (3) To evaluate the level of job satisfaction among dentists. (4) To explore how job satisfaction among dentists is associated with various personal and work related factors. (5) To determine coping strategies among Syrian dentists. Methods: Non-randomized and cross-sectional survey had been accomplished between October 2018 to March 2019. The questionnaire included modified version of the Occupational Stress, developed version of the dentist satisfaction survey. Besides, the coping strategies were administered for 409 dentists. Results: With response rate (82.8 %), 61.86% was reported being stressed. The most common cause of stress has maintained high levels of concentration. Least frequent stressor wasTreatment of patient with maladaptive response to nervous functions. The mean score of total careers of the respondents was 122.3. There is a medium-strong inverse correlation between scales of Job stressors and Job satisfaction. Most common coping strategy was referred to the interactions with people. Conclusions: Dentists are encouraged to implement extensively active coping strategies and participate in stress management courses helping them in job satisfaction improvement.