Tag: burnout

Categories : Hospitals Mental HealthTags :

Heavy Workload Reduces Outcomes and Turns Positives into Negatives

On By ModernMedia
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Employee wellbeing in healthcare is reflected in patient satisfaction, and a new study found that a heavy workload, even positive challenges such as learning new things are experienced as increased stress.

Researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland explored how the staff of a healthcare district experienced increasing job demands, and how wellbeing at work was linked to these demands. The study also clarified whether the demands on employees were reflected in patient satisfaction.

More than a thousand employees took part in the study and evaluated their experiences in a survey measuring intensified job demands, work exhaustion, and work engagement. Additionally, nearly a thousand patients of the healthcare district evaluated their treatment by the healthcare staff.

In line with expectations, healthcare staff’s experiences of greater time pressure and workload were associated with greater exhaustion. An especially high risk of exhaustion was seen in those working in emergency care and nurses.

Additionally, experience of increased job planning demands shared by the working community was associated with greater exhaustion and lower customer satisfaction. This was particularly evident in the staff of leadership services.

“A surprising observation was that none of the intensification demands was positively connected with work engagement,” said Senior Lecturer Mari Huhtala. “In the light of previous studies, employees may find some demands such as learning new things positive challenges, especially when the demands are reasonable. However, this was not the case with the studied healthcare employees. It is possible the general workload in healthcare has led to these positive challenges being experienced as additional stress as well.”

Research data for the study were collected using an electronic survey in the third quarter of 2019. The study will continue in the third quarter of 2021 with the collection of follow-up data.

Source: University of Jyväskylä

Journal information: Huhtala, M., et al. (2021) Intensified job demands in healthcare and their consequences for employee well‐being and patient satisfaction: A multilevel approach. Journal of Advanced Nursing. doi.org/10.1111/jan.14861.

Categories : Cardiovascular DiseaseTags :

WHO Says Overwork is Killing 745 000 People a Year

On By ModernMedia
Exhausted man looking at laptop in a restaurant. Photo by Tim Gouw from Pexels

Long working hours led to 745 000 deaths from stroke and ischaemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase from 2000, according to a report by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization.

Published in Environment International, this is the first global analysis of the loss of life and health associated with working long hours. The global analysis drew on 37 studies on ischaemic heart disease with over 768 000 participants and 22 studies on stroke with more than 839 000 participants.
The WHO and ILO estimate that, in 2016, 398 000 people died from stroke and 347 000 from heart disease as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease due to working long hours rose by 42%, and those from stroke by 19%.

This burden of work-related disease is particularly significant in men (72% of deaths were males), people living in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions, and middle-aged or older workers. Most of these deaths were among people aged 60-79 years, who had worked for 55 hours or more per week between the ages of 45 and 74 years.

Long work hours are now known to cause about one-third of the total estimated work-related burden of disease, and so is now the risk factor with the largest occupational disease burden. This shifts thinking towards a relatively new and more psychosocial occupational risk factor to human health.

Compared to a 35-40 hour work week, a 55 hour or more work week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease, concluded the study.

Increasing numbers of people are working long hours, currently standing at 9% of the world’s population. Even more people are being put at risk of work-related disability and early death by this trend.

This report comes just as the COVID pandemic is feeding a trend towards increased work hours. In China, 18 health workers died from overwork-related illnesses in the pandemic.

“The COVID pandemic has significantly changed the way many people work,“ said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Teleworking has become the norm in many industries, often blurring the boundaries between home and work. In addition, many businesses have been forced to scale back or shut down operations to save money, and people who are still on the payroll end up working longer hours. No job is worth the risk of stroke or heart disease. Governments, employers and workers need to work together to agree on limits to protect the health of workers.”

“Working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard,” added Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, at the WHO. “It’s time that we all, governments, employers, and employees wake up to the fact that long working hours can lead to premature death”.

The WHO pointed out the following actions that governments, employers and workers can take protect workers’ health:  

  • governments can introduce, implement and enforce laws, regulations and policies that ban mandatory overtime and ensure maximum limits on working time;
  • bipartite or collective bargaining agreements between employers and workers’ associations can arrange working time to be more flexible, while at the same time agreeing on a maximum number of working hours;
  • employees could share working hours to ensure that numbers of hours worked do not climb above 55 or more per week.  

Source: World Health Organization

Journal information: Pega, F., et al. 2021. Global, regional, and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000–2016: A systematic analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury. Environment International, p.106595.