TITLE:
Individual Differences in Experiencing Occupational Stress—A Case Study on Nurses of Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH)
AUTHORS:
Gifty Osei-Mireku, Xiangqian Wang, Jennifer Lartey, Francis Sarpong
KEYWORDS:
Occupational Stress, Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), Gender, Age, Marital Status
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.8 No.4,
July
24,
2020
ABSTRACT: 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 were 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.