Occupational stress and cardiovascular issues in television news activity

This paper represents a sequence of an extensive study aiming to highlight occupational risks and workloads / overloads and their impact on employees’ physical and mental health, and safety in the departments of a national TV company. This paper specifically deals with the News department. The study used an ergonomic methodology including technical-organizational and psychophysiological analysis of activities and conditions for their accomplishment, evaluation of work-related effort, assessment of work-related stress, morbidity peaks. The News department activity is characterized by working in shifts including night shifts, working on weekends and holidays, working long hours, field work, high standards of work, limited control, time pressure. The total work-related effort was of increased values, especially through very high mental effort and high temporal effort. The stress coefficients obtained in the news lot were the highest of all other lots from the other departments. The cardiovascular disorders were in the highest percentage in this lot. Metabolic and nutrition disorders were in significant numbers, too. Although activity, conditions, psychosocial environment components with probable impact on cardiovascular health might seem similar in several departments, the News’ one distinguished by the highest cardiovascular diseases percentage. In the crucible of multifactorial probable and possible cardiac disorder causal vectors, occupational stress distinguishes and might be correlated with the cardiovascular situation in the News department. It looks like closer “behind the glass” translates as prone to a greater stress and presumably to a higher cardiovascular risk.