Work stress

BackgroundHeavy training rotations load looms over medical residents because of spending long working hours in a stressful environment, the demands of which might exceed their adapting capacity and could affect their psychological and endocrinal functions. The main objective of this research was to study the depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and sequence of salivary cortisol rise as work stress parameters among medical residents in the Ain Shams University, Faculty of Medicine, and identify their correlates. Participants and methodsThis cross-sectional, descriptive study included 47 residents (age range of 24–29 years) of both sexes and different specialties of Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Medicine and who had finished at least 6 months of their residency. Residents with current general medical, allergic, or neurological diseases, substance abuse, and those who scored more than 300 on the social readjustment scale were excluded from the study. All students were assessed using Social Readjustment Rating Scale, the Hospital Consultants’ Job Stress and Satisfaction Questionnaire, the Hamilton Anxiety Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. Furthermore, salivary cortisol was tested for the students. ResultsAmong the studied sample, 38 (87.2%) perceived work as stressful, 24 (51.1%) had mild to moderate depressive symptoms, whereas 26 (55.3%) mild anxiety symptoms, 15 (31.9%) mild to moderate anxiety symptoms, and 22 (46.8%) had an abnormal sequence of cortisol rise. Abnormal sequence of cortisol rise was significantly correlated with residency rank (P=0.01), whereas overall work stress was significantly correlated with job clinical nature (P=0.03), depressive symptoms (P=0.04), and anxiety symptoms (P=0.02). ConclusionMedical residents showed high level of work stress-related anxiety and depressive symptoms and high level of abnormal salivary cortisol sequence rise, which was correlated to their residency rank.