Individual Differences in Experiencing Occupational Stress—A Case Study on Nurses of Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH)

摘要

The concept of stress has been a long and lingering topic of research for ages. Stress in nurses in particular is no exception. Occupational stress is the threats of a job that workers face in the line of duty. However, one cannot separate the stress that already exists in their individual lives from those they face in line of duty. It is, therefore , undoubtedly possible that the level of occupational stress recorded may not be solely occupational problems. This paper seeks to find out the level of stress in nurses of TTH and whether individual differences affect the stress levels of nurses taking gender, age and marital status into consideration. The study used the Wieman Occupational stress scale to measure stress level; t-test, One-Way and Three-Way ANOVA w ere used to determine the relationship between individual differences and levels of stress. Per the study, TTH records a mean score of 43.47 and an individual average score of 2.88 thus, 29% above normal stress level (baseline score: 33.75, 2.25 WOSS) indicating a generally high stress level among the nurses. A sample size of 452 revealed that there is a significant association between stress and gender ( p = 0.041) and male nurses were more stressed than female nurses. There was also a significant association between age and level of stress ( p = 0.00), where younger nurses (20 - 30 years) were more stressed than older nurses (30 - 40 years and above 40 years). However, no significant association was found between marital status and occupational stress. Although combined together, these three variables do not affect stress, the results for individual variables report the need for management and researchers to integrate individual differences when investigating or managing occupational stress.