Investigating the Relationship between Job Stress and Working Pressures and Their Effect on the Job Performance of Personnel in Educational Hospitals of Larestan University of Medical Sciences

Psychological factors have a significant impact on development of disruptions as well as work-related accidents. Improving mental conditions and paying attention to these factors can increase the health of employees. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of occupational stress and mental workload on job performance of hospital personnel.

The study population was the personnel of educational hospitals in Larestan (Lar, Khonj and Ewaz), among them 289 people were selected from all occupational units based on the census method. The instruments used in this study were demographic characteristics questionnaire, OSIPOW Questionnaire, NASA-TLX and Patersonchr('39')s Job Performance Questionnaire. For analyzing the data in SPSS-21 software, the Pearson correlation coefficient, Independent T-test and ANOVA were used.

The average age of participants was 34.16±8.52. The results of the study showed that the average total score of mental workload and occupational stress were 63.28±18.01 and 151.45±25.96, respectively. Also, the frequency distribution of stress level and job performance in most personnel showed that they were at the normal and medium levels. There was a significant relationship between job type and income with total score of mental workloads (p<0.05). Pearson correlation coefficient showed a significant relationship between performance and job stress (p<0.05). In the study of the relationship between job stress and demographic variables, a significant relationship was found between gender variables and job stress (p<0.05). The correlation coefficient of job performance with job stress in hospital staff showed that there was a significant inverse relationship between these two variables, so that, with increasing job stress, job performance decreased.

The results of the research showed that the mental workload of nurses is high compared to the other occupations and when the job stress increases, the personnel performance decreases.