Job Stress in Administrative Employees of Public Medical Institutes in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract: Background: Job stress arises when job demands exceed an individual’s coping capacity, leading to physical and psychological strain. Factors include excessive workload, tight deadlines, and lack of support. Objective: To measure the job-related stress in the administrative employees in public medical institutes of Punjab. Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study took place at three public medical institutes in Punjab from Nov 2022 to July 2023, after the approval of the ethical review board. The data was collected through an interview-administered questionnaire. A well-structured questionnaire was devised using the Likert scale to collect the required data, with a score of 1 denoting no stress and 5 denoting extreme stress. A sample of 150 subjects was taken by purposive sampling technique. The collected data was entered and analyzed on SPSS software version 20. Result: The mean age was 31.03±8.90. The overall mean job stress score reported in the present study was 3.35±0.59. The mean stress score regarding the nature of the task was 3.56±0.68, for the boss behavior was 3.30±0.36; regarding the organizational environment, it was 3.10±0.67; and for job-related tension, the mean stress score was 3.69±0.68, indicating that the participants were experiencing moderately to higher stress levels. Factors like workload, irritating noisy environment, lack of appreciation, and critical boss significantly contributed to higher stress levels. Conclusion: The study indicated that most employees had moderate to high levels of job stress during work owing to several factors such as working overtime, unfamiliar duty, excessive criticism, heavy workload, and lack of authority.