Health and Community Services Module

Work Related Stress

Stress is often part of work in the health and community services industry, because employees may often deal with sick, elderly, and injured people on a daily basis. Examples of stressful work you may have to do include jobs that involve:

dealing with violent and aggressive behaviour or the threat of it occurring
dealing with injury, disease and death, and
having continuous contact with people and human suffering.

Occupational stress is people's natural reaction to being put under intense pressure at work over a period of time. It is reasonable for your employer to assume that you are mentally capable of withstanding some degree of pressure from normal work demands. However, individual circumstances at different times may mean you are more at risk of becoming stressed.

Stress can be started or made worse by work arrangements, deadlines and demands set without consultation, conflict, bullying and harassment. Personal problems at home, or a death or illness in the family will also influence your capacity to cope with stress at work.

Stress is not a disease or injury, but it may cause your work performance to drop and your health to decline. The effects of stress can be both physical and behavioural. Generally these effects last only briefly and have little or no long term effects.

Physical effects may include increased heart rate, headache, blurred vision, perspiration, dizziness, aching neck and shoulder muscles, clenched jaw and skin rashes.

Behavioural effects sometimes include increased anxiety and irritability. 'flying off the handle' easily, excess alcohol and other drug taking, poor sleeping, impaired concentration, and even nervous breakdown.

Not all pressure is harmful. People are often kept motivated by the challenges and difficulties we meet and are able to solve at work. However, the ability to deal with pressures is not limitless.

Preventing Stress

To reduce or remove unnecessary stress, employers can:

provide a consistent approach to management
encourage supervisors and employees to talk about any problems or concerns
provide well-defined tasks with clear responsibilities
provide relief if the job is very monotonous or boring
set challenging but achievable targets
use flexible work schedules that are planned and agreed
make sure that people are treated fairly and without bullying or harassment, and
provide positive feedback when appropriate.

There will always be times at work when you feel more stressed than usual. Talking to others about your concerns often eases the pressure. Keeping fit and healthy will help you deal with a crisis better.