HEALTH CARE WORKERS STRATEGIES FOR COPING WITH STRESS

Abstract

Working as a doctor, nurse, and midwife is associated with great responsibility for the health and life of patients. It is a source of many burdens, which result in marked, chronic stress leading to professional burnout and related consequences affecting all spheres of life. The research aimed to analyze healthcare workers’ preferred stress-coping strategies.The study encompassed 134 healthcare workers practicing the profession of doctor, nurse, and midwife, working in the cities of Lublin in the period from May 2022 to February 2023. We employeda self-made questionnaire and the Stress Coping Inventory (Mini-COPE). The PS IMAGO 9.0 program was used for the calculations and analysis of the results.The strategies of coping with stress most often used by doctors, nurses, and midwives were based on active coping and planning. The three surveyed groups of healthcare workers differ statistically significantly in using the denial strategy. Nurses are more likely than physicians to use denial as a coping strategy. There were no statistically significant differences in the remaining strategies of coping with stress.Healthcare workers in stressful situations often choose active ways of dealing with them, especially active coping and planning. An important factor that strengthens the choice of active strategies for coping with stress seems to be training aimed at improving the professional qualifications of healthcare workers.