Features of occupational stress in doctors and other medical practitioners

The high pace of modern life is a factor that creates psycho-emotional stress. Stress is an important mechanism for coping with every day’s challenges. Problems start to occur when the stress response is inappropriate to the size of the challenge. If not managed, high stress levels result in high levels of dissatisfaction, mental and physical illness, burnout, decreased productivity, and as a result, difficulty in providing quality service to clients. Constant stress negatively affects not only the state of the nervous system, but also the body as a whole. People in some occupations are in contact with stressors almost constantly. This group includes medical professionals. The effect of occupational stress on doctors not only has potential negative consequences for their patients, but also represents a substantial potential cost to the public health sector in terms of impaired doctors’ performance, together with the need for retraining and additional recruitment to offset wastage. This review analyses the topics of what stress is, what occupational stress is and what classifications exist for it, why occupational stress and burnout is common among physicians, and how it can be recognized and prevented.