Sources of Stress and Coping Strategies among Iranian Physicians

BACKGROUND: Physicians are at risk of having high levels of stress which affect their performance. Finding the stressors and the coping skills to manage stress could be used to develop program to decrease stressful situation. No study has been done on Physicians' stress and coping in Iran. The main objective of this study is to find out the main stressors and coping strategies among Iranian Physicians working in hospital in Tehran-Iran.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed on 780 Physicians,using a questionnaire consisted of two sections ;The first section were the stressors which included 67 questions and The second section were The Brief COPE with 28-items for assessing a broad range of coping behaviors among respondents.

RESULTS: A total of 1100 questionnaires were distributed to all the available Physicians in the hospitals selected. 780 Physicians returned complete questionnaires with observed response rate of 75%. The majority of respondents (56.9%) were women. The first 3 sources of stress in workplace (Job stressors) are physical environment problem (75%), too much volume of work and poorly paid. The main sources of stress outside the work place (non-job stressors) ranked by Physicians were; financial problem (9.09), not enough time to spend with family (8.87), conflicts with household tasks (7.36).The top five coping strategies used by Iranian Physicians were Behavioral Disengagement, Planning, Instrumental support, Acceptance, and turning to religion.

CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed that both workplace and non-job sources of stress can affect the Physicians performance and there is an association between gender and coping skills.