Leadership Roles in Occupational Stress
Stress is a natural response of our psychological and physical state to life experiences. We all go through stress at some of point in our life, but how we respond to it is what makes a difference. If not addressed immediately and appropriately, daily stress can result to chronic stress. Stress can be triggered by many events such as issues with family, school, health, finance, and work. For the purpose of this paper, I would like to focus on the work-related stress, and how the role of those in leadership makes an impact in alleviating it.
Wearing different hats, as a nurse, mother, and a student can easily result to a lot of stress, and this is why this topic interests me. Although every person view and react to stress differently, I would like to learn more how to better manage it and help those who are going through it. As a trauma coordinator at a local hospital, one of my roles is act as a resource and a leader for nurses when they have questions or concerns about trauma protocols and procedures. These nurses are put on stressful situations daily, and nurse leaders can assist on decreasing or relieving their stress. Many journal articles examined and discussed the cause, effect, and management of stress. I would like share a few articles I have found in relate to this topic.
“Nurses and stress: recognizing causes and seeking solutions” by Happell, Dwyer, and Reid-Searl (2013), aimed to recognize work-related stressors and ways to decrease it, based on the nurses’ viewpoint (p. 638). They discussed the negative results of high stress to the nurses’ physical and psychological wellbeing, the healthcare organization, and patients. The sources of work-related stress include, but not limited to, high work demands, limited resources, unsafe nurse-patient ratio and patient acuity, and unsupportive management. It was proposed in the article that in order to reduce stress in the workplace, nurse leaders ought to acknowledge the occupational stressors and engage with the staff nurses on how it can be reduced.
“Stress prevention at work” by Hoek, Havermans, Houtman, Brouwers, Heerkens, Zijlstra, Anema, Van Der Beek, and Boot (2018), talked about how appropriate intervention on occupational stress can decrease and prevent staff burnout, stress, and sick leave in healthcare organizations (p. 1). They have identified five steps to manage work-related stress and this include: recognizing stress in the workplace; assessing the problem; identifying solutions; application of intervention; and evaluating it. They have concluded that organizational occupational management can improve productivity and decrease staff burnout. Nurse leaders who practice transformational leadership, that goes out to practice their vision and gets involved with the team, is beneficial in attaining the identified solutions.
Have you heard of a saying that goes “employees do not leave the company, but they leave their boss?” I find this statement to be true, and this next article verifies it. The article titled “Leader behavior as determinant of health at work” by Wegge, Shemla, and Haslam (2014) presented how much leadership affects the employees’ overall health (p. 7). They examined the four most common types of leadership behaviors, which are passive or destructive, change-oriented, task-oriented, and relationship-oriented. They looked at each of these behaviors and studied how it influences the employees. They have found that engaged leaders cause employees to interact, which results to decrease burnout and turnover.
“Leadership and stress: A meta-analytic review” by Harms, Crede, Tynan, Leon, and Jeung (2017) focused on how stressed leaders result to stressed followers (p. 178). They studied the association between the three leadership ideas, which are transformational leadership, abusive management, and leader to member exchange, and how these three result to occupational stress and staff burnout. They have confirmed that when a leader is under stress, it influences their behavior. The leader’s stressed behavior gets passed on to the rest of the team and burnout occurs.
Nurse leaders are the facilitators of the process in a unit or the whole organization. However, communicating with the staff and asking for their needs and concerns will reduce occupational stress. For the patients to have a quality care and healthy outcome, healthcare providers must also have a healthy mental and physical state. Scott, Graham, Engeland, Smyth, Almeida, Katz, Lipton, Mogle, Munoz, Ram, & Sliwinski (2015) stated that over time, repeated exposure to stress can result to faster cognitive deterioration (p. 146). Stress, whatever the cause may be, has shown to adversely affect a person’s mental health. Leaders of any organizations must keep in mind that they have the power to either make a positive or negative impact on employees’ psychological and physical health. They also need to reflect on themselves and ensure that they manage their own stress effectively.