REVIEW ARTICLE 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. REFFERENCES:  AbuAlRub, R.F. (2006). The relationship between job stress, job performance and social support among Hospital Nurses. J Nurs Scholarsh (38), 200–4.  Beehr, T.A. (1999).Perceived situational moderators of the relationship between subjective role ambiguity and role strain . J Appl Psychol (61), 35–40.  Blix, A. G., Cruse, R. J., Mitchell, B. M. M. B., & Blix, G. G. (1994). Occupational stress among university teachers. Educational Research, 36, 157-170.  Borg, M. G., & Riding, R. J. (1991). 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