الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Work-related stress represents a huge problem affecting a major sector of physicians. It has been found that work stress impacts not only on physician’s health but also their ability to cope with job demands. This will seriously impair the provision of quality of health care and the efficacy of health service delivery. Accordingly, knowledge about work-related stress is crucial for identifying risk factors for mental distress and burnout among physicians, and adopting sound working environments in health care institutions that will ensure appropriate patient care.
Although it is important to maintain health and safety of family physicians in order to give patients the high quality service they deserve, yet little concern has been given to this problem and a literature search failed to find any qualitative research on this topic among Egyptian family physicians.
Thus the purpose of this study was to highlight some serious work place stressors that family physicians are dealing with in order to make work place settings in Egypt more safe for family physicians and more conductive physician well-being.
This study was a descriptive cross sectional study that included 128 family physicians from all family health centers and units sited in three randomly selected health sectors in Alexandria, Egypt. These health sectors were El Montaza, El Agamy and East health sectors. All family physicians were subjected to a special interviewing schedule which was designed to collect data about personal, family and medical histories, and workplace characteristics.
The schedule included the following sections: 1) section one that highlighted socio-demographic data and it included: sex, age, marital status, offspring, smoking, and health condition, 2) section two assessed work related stressors, which were identified by a modified “National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Generic Job Stress Questionnaire” (NIOSH-GJSQ) it comprises 17 domains, each domain is evaluated by a number of items (questions), in each item every possibility has a specific score. A total score and a percent score of each domain were calculated and participants were categorized according to their percent score into stressed (percent score < 60%) or unstressed (percent score ≥60%). The following domains were evaluated: work physical environment, role conflict, role ambiguity, inter group and intra group conflict, job future ambiguity, control scale over work and work related factors, employment opportunities, social support, quantitative work load, skill underutilization, responsibility about others, mental demands, non work activities, somatic complaints, self-esteem, health conditions and job satisfaction. 3) Section three assessed psychological symptoms, which were measured using the “Irritability, Depression, and Anxiety (IDA) scale”, this questionnaire included 18 items and were divided into: 5 items measured depression, 8 items measured outward and inward irritability, and 5 items evaluated anxiety. 4) Section four assessed the assossiation between personal characteristics, work characteristics, NIOSH domains and the state of depression experienced by the studied family physicians
Results showed that role ambiguity and non-work activities were the main work place stressors. Stressors that caused moderate stress were somatic complaints, inter-group conflict, skill underutilization & intra-group conflict. Stressors that caused mild stress were perceived control & responsibility about others. On the other hand factors that were not considered as work place stressors were physical environment, role conflict, job future ambiguity, lack of alternative opportunities, social support from supervisor, social support from coworkers, social support from family / friends, quantitative workload, mental demands, self-esteem and job satisfaction.
Depression was above the border line range (4-6), while anxiety, inward irritability, and outward irritability were within the normal range (6-8, 4-6, and 5-7 respectively). This study also showed significant positive correlation between depression and some stressors which were; role ambiguity, intra-group conflict and perceived control.