INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND STRESS-PERFORMANCE RELATIONSHIP
Abstract
Background: Medicine is a high risk profession. Infectious diseases, dealing with difficult patients,accidents on the job, and other hazards have shortened the careers of many practitioners. The extent towhich they experience stress turns into poor performance in terms of quality of patient care. Personalitytraits are often thought to affect the stress that a person perceives. Specific types of personalities seemto be more susceptible to the effects of stress than others. Job performance is associated with differentlevels of stress. The purpose of the present study was to investigate any effect of job stress on jobperformance and effect of personality type on the stress-performance relationship. Methods: All 55house officers enrolled at Ayub Teaching Hospital at the time of study were included in the study.Primary data was gathered through questionnaire designed to address personality type and to gatheredinformation about job stress and performance. Individual semi-structured interviews and observationswere used to collect information in order to find out how the work patterns have been influenced byenvironmental factors. The data obtained through questionnaire was analysed using the statisticalmethods including descriptive statistics, Spearman’s correlation and multiple regression. Results: Theresults indicated that Type A individuals tend to experience more stress than Type B, however no majorstatistical differences were found. Type A individuals performed slightly better than Type B.Conclusion: Identification of house officers’ personality traits will be helpful in assessing stress anddesigning different stress coping strategies to reduce their level of stress and improve their performance.The correlation between job stress and job performance among house officers with Type A personalitycharacteristics is high.Keywords: Job stress, Occupational stress, Personality Type, PerformanceReferences
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