JOB STRESS OF WORKING NURSES : CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - A STUDY AT NORTHBENGAL MEDICAL COLLEGE, DARJEELING

Abstract

Job stress is an important phenomenon in an employee’s working life. The tremendous work pressure in an organization may lead to job stress which may, in turn, lead to some serious consequences. Physiological, psychological and behavioral consequences may generate high blood pressure, heart diseases, hypertension, alcoholism and may even lead to death. In today’s fast world, people are running for success. Due to a high degree of competition, organizations are putting too much pressure on employees for better performance. However, due to some causes like lack of infrastructure, lack of support from top management, role conflict, lack of training, etc., employees are not always in a position to respond to the high expectations of them. And, this mismatch leads to high frustration and stress. A study has been done on the staff nurses working in the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital in the Darjeeling District ofWest Bengal with a view to assessing the job stress on them and different consequences they are facing. A questionnaire was developed by using the ORS Scale suggested by Pareek and was distributed, in a random manner, among 68 nurses.The questionnaire comprises 50 questions. 10 role stress variables have been used to find out the causes of job stress and the dependency of these variables on the consequences of job stress. Multiple Regression Analysis was done to find out these causes of job stress and the consequences that follow. This study has tried to respond to the issues like influence of role stress variables on job stress and the impact of role stress variables on physiological, psychological and behavioral consequences.