TECHNOSTRESS AMONG UNIVERSITY MEDICAL STAFF MEMBERS; A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Introduction: Technostress is an emerging type of stress affecting various sectors including students, teachers, and university medical staff members. Although technology has many blessings, technostress was described as the dark side of technology use. Aim of Work: To assess the technostress creators and productivity relative to various factors among university medical staff members. Materials and Methods: A crosssectional study was carried out on 136 medical staff members from Mansoura University. A questionnaire, developed by google form, was sent to the emails of all theselected university medical staff members. The questionnaire included questions about socio-demographic data and a section to assess the technostress creators and the degree of productivity. The last section measured the technostress related symptoms among the studied group including neck ache, headache, blurred vision, sleep problems, anxiety,irritability, poor appetite, fatigue, increased level of mental load, time pressure and frustration. Results: University medical staff members had a moderate level of technooverload, techno-invasion and academic productivity. Wi-Fi quality, information and communication technology (ICT) experience years and hours spent using technology devices had significant effect on some of the technostress creators and as well on productivity. The prevalence of technostress symptoms in the study participants were time pressure (59.6%), headache (57.4%), blurred vision (55.1%) and neck ache(50.7%). Conclusion and Recommendations: The studied sample experienced a considerable level of technostress which affected their productivity. High quality internet services fulfilling their needs, provision of training courses, and availability of technical support are measures that could help the university staff to prevent and control their technostress and subsequently improving their productivity.