Comparative Study of Occupational Stress among Health Care Professionals in Government and Corporate Hospitals

The occupational stress among the health care professionals is currently a major concern in all over the world. The main aim of the present study has been to investigate the levels of stress among doctors, nurses and supporting staff in corporate and government hospitals in different locations of the psychosocial and organizational characteristics of their job. The cross-sectional survey of health care professionals were (n=1200) chosen at random from government and corporate hospitals from four different places of major and minor cities in India. A self- administered questionnaire was the method used for data collection this questionnaire contained various items on psychosomatic symptoms, self-perceived health, socio demographic data, job satisfaction, health risk and emotional load. The findings suggest that the government hospital doctors feel high level of stress and it is highly significant (p less than 0.01) when compared to nurses and supporting staff working in corporate hospitals. Furthermore, based on the location, the health care professionals feel significantly (p less than 0.01) high level of stress working at government hospitals in Tiruvarur. The results suggest that the doctors working in government hospitals feels more stress when compared to other health care professionals. The occurrence of high stress levels among doctors, leading the author to conclude that social support and the psychosocial work climate should be improved in health care institutions.