Sources of stress and ways of coping in junior house officers

Abstract This study uses a qualitative approach to look at stress and coping in a group of 173 pre‐registration doctors. Asking them to describe a recent stressful event and the way they coped with it revealed the largest group of events to concern death, followed by relationships with senior doctors, mistakes seen as personally caused, and overwork. The majority of coping strategies involved tackling the problem or asking for help. From longitudinal data on this sample a consistently stressed group was isolated and shown to report significantly more perceived mistakes than a consistently unstressed group, and to try to cope with the event significantly more by dismissing it from their minds. No sex differences were found. The implications for medical training and future impairment are discussed.