Association between Stress and Job Satisfaction in Young Doctors in Tertiary Care Hospitals in Lahore, Pakistan

Author(s): Zohaib Khan, Zeelaf Butt, Arfaa Asghar, Aijaz Zeeshan Khan Chachar, Kinza Khan

Background: With the introduction of the countless technological advancement in today’s day and age, one would expect the overall wellness of the physical being and the mind to rise significantly. Granted there has been an increase in the overall physical health of the people of the world, however the overall mental health problems of the world over have also increased over time, with WHO estimating as many as 450 million people affected worldwide.1 Often the decrease in mental health is manifested in ways such as, depression, stress and suicidal tendencies. objectives: The objective of this article was to determine if there was an association of stress with the job satisfaction. In addition, the secondary objectives were to determine if there were any demographic associations with job satisfaction. Materials and Methods: Study Design & Study Settings: This was a cross sectional study was set to include the doctors from two tertiary care hospitals in Lahore, Pakistan. Namely, Shaikh Zayed Medical Complex and Jinnah Hospital, Lahore. Results: In the sample pool, majority of the doctors were male (56.7%) and out of the 150, 86% were under the age of 25, even though the average age of the responders was 27 years old. A huge majority (60%) of the doctors worked at the level of a Post Graduate Trainee, with 56% of the total doctors having worked in the Medicine Department. Of the 150 doctors, only 5 of them claimed to be under low levels of stress with the majority of the doctors landing in areas of drastically elevated stress. The average for the stress levels is at 12 which register as moderately high stress levels on the used scales. It was found that job satisfaction correlates negatively with job stress meaning that an increasing job stress will decrease job satisfaction and this finding was significant. (p < .001). for independent predictors like age, gender marital status residential status, and job title, Age showed a negative beta for job satisfaction i.e. each unit increase in job results in decreasing satisfaction level, while the rest of covariates also showed a non-significant relationship with job satisfaction. Conclusion: The regression analysis done with the data does hint that there may be an association between the two parameters. According to the results there is however a definite decrease in the over satisfaction of the job as the levels of overall stress rises.

Stress, Job Satisfaction, Young Doctors

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