Work Stress among Traffic Police of Ahmedabad City, Gujarat, India: A Cross-sectional Study

Introduction: The traffic police maintain a smooth flow of traffic and maintain safe and secure movements on the roads. Police face various kinds of hazards such as accident hazards, physical, chemical, and biological hazards, ergonomic hazards, psychosocial hazards, and hazards related to organisational factors of the police department. Work stress is a result of psychosocial hazards, and it has the potential to affect an individual’s health and efficiency to perform police work. Aim: The study aimed to investigate work stress, an occupational health disease, in the traffic police of Ahmedabad city, Gujarat, India. Materials and Methods: In the present descriptive, crosssectional study, 420 traffic police from all fourteen traffic police stations of Ahmedabad city, Gujarat, India were randomly selected. The study included male and female traffic police from all cadres, and data was collected from November 2019 to March 2021. The study used an informed consent form and selfadministered questionnaire to collect data on demographics, work profile, and Occupational Stress Index (OSI). The MannWhitney U test was used to evaluate the hypotheses, and a Significant p-value was set at 0.05. Results: When measured using OSI, 257 (61.19%) participants had moderate work stress, and 111 (26.43%) participants had high work stress. The traffic police reported work stress owing to all twelve OSI dimensions of work stress. Apart from OSI, factors such as public friction and public distrust could be potential stressors and cause work stress. Conclusion: The study discovered that traffic police of Ahmedabad city were not bulletproof against work stress, and it was widely prevalent. Multiple work-related factors were taxing the traffic police, which ultimately led to work stress. The research findings provide an insight into the current health status of the traffic police. Moreover, not only the identification of the work stress important but also the management is equally important.