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www.aeirc-edu.com                                                                                                                                                                               Volume 1- 2014 

Page | 27 
©Advance Education Institute & Research Centre-2014                                                                                             

 WORK-PLACE STRESS??? 

Maria Altaf 

Fatima Jinnah Dental College 

Corresponding Author: maria3188@gmail.com 

 

Dr. Hans Selye said “following the right attitude can covert a 

negative stress into positive one and one can easily successful 

life”. 

Stress is not always negative or dangerous and indeed, the 

absence of stress is death. 

 Eustress- a positive stress, it is very healthy and person get more 

energy and strength to conquer the stress, this way it helps to 

resolve the different situation in a shortest possible time, and one 

gets more positive thinking and get good results at the end of the 

stress. It elaborates motivation and inspiration. According to 

Hans Sclye “adopting the right attitude can convert a negative 

stress into positive one”. 

There has been an almost 100% rise in the occurrence of mental 

disability, particularly stress, depression and anxiety, in the 

country over the past 10 years, mainly due to the outcomes of 

personal insecurity, financial condition, lack of education, rising 

inflation, said senior psychiatrist, the President of the Pakistan 

Association of Mental Health (PAMH), Dr. Haroon Ahmed, 

directing the press conference, which held in connection with the 

World Mental Health Day that falls on Oct 10. From the last 

decades changing nature of work, and indeed changes in society 

itself, means that it is important to regularly update available 

information on the scale of occupational stress. Indeed, at times 

it will execute that there is little relevant information on the 

current situation, as can be seen from the following quote: 'There 

are no dependable estimates of the incidence of occupational 

stress and related disorders in the working population'. However, 

in the last few years a number of surveys have attempted to 

provide information on these topics. Nowadays, quality 

productivity is very essential for organizational survival. 

Therefore, stress at workplace becomes a leading concern to 

organization administrators. Beehr, (1999) used a very general 

definition in which ‘anything about an organizational role that 

produces adverse consequences for the individual’ was called 

role stress. They proceeded to conclude that a condition termed 

role overload was viable and this correlated positively with job 

stress. Stress indicators related to role expressions in the study 

indicated low motivation to work (Cooper,1999). Occupational 

stress has often been termed as an aversive characteristic of the 

working ambiance. This has often led to stress being assembled 

with physical hazards, such as noise, and research being directed 

to measurement of exposure levels and examination of the 

relationship between these and health/ performance outcomes. A 

country like Pakistan where, physical resources at educational 

institutions are deficient, salaries are inappropriate, discipline 

problems are frequent, most of the workers are not well equipped 

with modern methods of technology as well as many managerial 

issues, which keep the employees stressful at workplace. Job 

performance is the result of three factors working together: skill, 

effort and the nature of working conditions. Skills include 

knowledge, power and competencies the employee brings to the 

job; effort is the degree of motivation the employee puts forth 

toward getting the job done; and the nature of work conditions is 

the degree of accommodation of these conditions in facilitating 

the employee’s productivity (Levey, 2001) .         

 Stress can be defined as a vibrant situation in which a person get 

an opportunity, or demand to achieve any objective but the 

results are perceived to be uncertain and imperatives. There are 

three interrelated aspects of stress: environmental demands; 

adaptive response; and individual differences (Kinicki , 2001). 

The complication of these definitions is primarily overcome by 

Lazarus (1999) description about the stress that it is situation, we 

involved when demands perceived exceeding from the ability, 

we have to perform the task. Moorhead and Griffin (2001) stated 

that “stress is caused by a stimulus that can be either physical or 

psychological, and that the unique response to the stimulus in 

some way. Here, we define stress as a person’s adaptive response 

to a stimulus that places excessive psychological or physical 

demands on him or her”. Fleet Van (1991) has successfully 

attempted to compose the numerous definitions of stress into 

single meaningful definition that “stress is a person’s adaptive 

response to excessive psychological or physical demands ground 

by some stimulus”. The symptoms may involve body aches like 

rashes, muscle and body aches, muscle spasm, headache, 

increase or decrease appetite, diarrhea or constipation, change in 

weight, gastric problems, dermatitis, eczema, allergies, chest 

pain, fast heartbeat, heartburn, difficulties in breathing, high 

blood pressure, Loss of sexual desire, frequent urination, 

Frequent cold, tremors, trembling/tremors, fatigue, tiredness, low 

energy, obsessive compulsive behaviors, low work efficiency, 

constant blushing, sweating, dry mouth. 

 Hui and Chan (1996) brought up various research studies, which 

have been undertaken to investigate the prevalence and major 

sources of teacher stress in England, Wales, USA, Australia, 

Malta and West Indies (Borg, 1991; Dunham,1992) and brought 

forward sources of faculty stress along with occupational 

stressors. University faculty faces high stress because of their 

dynamic responsibility to respond to social and institutional 

change, positional clash and task obscurity. Other identified 

sources of stress in the university setting include meager working 

conditions, faculty interpersonal relationships, institutional 

management, administrative style, and pressure posed by 

stakeholders. Job satisfaction indicates fair treatment, mutual 

respect; better functioning that positively influences performance 

of university teachers. The developing countries are in 

transitional phase of evolution, newly exposed to economic 

integration and started experiencing workforce diversity to larger 

extent. Wisniewski (1990) conducted a study in response to the 

number of issues related to faculty job satisfaction is raised in 

academic conversation such as to what extent teacher is satisfied, 

applicability of work with teacher’s own desire, opportunity cost 

of being a teacher, favor and disfavor of work characteristics and 

overall perception towards teaching profession. He found some 

major factors such as: competitive pay scale, smooth working 

conditions, pleasant institutional culture and rooms for new 

experiments, and betterment. 

           

 At the university level, expectations from teachers have raised. 

At the same time, they have to experience very challenging and 

demanding tasks related to teaching and research. They go 



REVIEW ARTICLE  
www.aeirc-edu.com                                                                                                                                                                               Volume 1- 2014 

Page | 28 
©Advance Education Institute & Research Centre-2014                                                                                             

through a lot of occupational stress while performing their duties. 

This occupational stress relates to the incapability of worker to 

respond to the dynamic work requirement. Work-related health 

issues are generally caused by occupational stress and considered 

as one of ten leading health problems. Stress disorders have 

negatively affected the industry, causing loss over $150 billion 

dollars because of decreased productivity, absenteeism and 

incapability (Blix et al., 1994). By working on occupational 

stress, we can make substantial refinements in teaching ability of 

faculty, overall graduates learning consequences’ and quality of 

education. The class sizes, conditions of classroom and academic 

burden of faculty contribute a lot in the productivity of university 

faculty (Rocca & Kostanski 2001). The stress bearing capacity is 

backed by their level of satisfaction to the institutions. The 

greatly stressed and poorly satisfied faculty cannot help the 

universities to compete such global queries. The universities in 

Pakistan and other countries particularly of developing nations 

need to adopt continuous job satisfaction and occupational stress 

assessment programs and investigate their causal relationship. 

Due to the service oriented character of the job, faculty of 

universities is in direct contact with graduates/customers, and 

highly satisfied faculty with low level of stress can produce 

stratified graduates and make long-term impact on university 

branding.  

The documented consequences of stress on medical trainees 

include: alcohol and drug abuse, interpersonal relationship 

adversity, depression, anxiety, and suicide (Levey,2001; Shapiro, 

2000) Other studies have also shown stress can be detrimental to 

the medical trainees’ or professional’s academic achievement, 

effectiveness in delivering health services by decreasing attention 

span, concentration, decision-making, and a cognition to 

establish physician-patient relationships. (Shapiro, 2000, Michie, 

2003) In addition to affecting psychological and emotional well-

being, stress can also disrupts physical health, such as the 

development of high blood pressure, heart disease, and immuno 

deficiency disorders ( Stewart, 1996). The physical and 

psychological demands of the profession often make physicians 

more vulnerable to high levels of stress. The effects of stress on 

practice are evidenced as increased errors in prescribing, limited 

team working, more patients’ complaints and sickness absence 

(Niaz , 2003). A study conducted by Abu Al-Rub indicated a 

curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship between job stress and job 

performance; nurses who reported moderate levels of job stress 

believed that they performed their jobs less well than did those 

who reported low or high levels of job stress (AbuAlRub , 2006)  

 

CONCLUSION: 

Stress has been viewed as a physiological reaction to a 

threatening or harming environment. Another approach has 

viewed stress in terms of an interactional framework, one of the 

best examples being Karasek's model, suggesting that job 

demands and decision latitude interact to influence health. 

However it can be managed by various techniques like daily use 

exercise, healthy diet plan, yoga, meditation, treatment, 

relaxation, patient counseling, medication and alternative 

therapies, herbal medicine and aroma therapy helps in reducing 

the stress. 

 

 

 

 

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 AbuAlRub, R.F. (2006). The relationship between job 

stress, job performance and social support among Hospital 

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relationship between subjective role ambiguity and role 

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G. (1994). Occupational stress among university teachers. 

Educational Research, 36, 157-170. 

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