Work-Related Stress Specific to Physicians and Nurses Working with Cancer Patients

This article describes a study comparing the work related stress experienced by physicians and nurses working with cancer patients and by those working with patients in cardiac, intensive care, or surgical units. Stress was measured with a newly developed questionnaire containing one question for each of 64 potentially stressful situations; each question was to be answered according to the relevance and degree of emotional or physical stress caused by each situation. The respondents were 299 physicians and 592 nurses from 54 different hospilals and clinics. Although the oncology and corn arison groups experienced the same overall degree of work-relate (stress and physical complaints, the oncology group suffered more from feellngs of emotional involvement and selfdoubt. However, they suffered less from stress connected with institutional factors than did the comparison group dcspite few objective differences in their situalions. Differences in patterns of coping and subjective perceptions of stress may explain these findings.