Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Medical Laboratory Professionals work long hours in physically and mentally exhausting duties that may affect their well-being. Occupational stress is associated with a negative impact at both the individual level, organizational level, and subsequently on the overall health care system due to poor health of workers, decreased work performance, and quality of care offered. This study investigated occupational stress in a medical laboratory setting in the Namibian context.
METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional study was conducted between June to August 2020 from a total of 102 randomly selected medical laboratory professionals. This study used the shortened new version of the Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI) to measure stress. Each key dimension is made up of related statements relating to factors associated with occupational stress. The collected data were entered into a Microsoft excel sheet, later exported into the SPSS, version 25 for cleaning and analysis. Frequencies were used to determine the number and percent of respondents. Scoring of the mean total weighted average scores was used to determine the prevalence and determine associated factors. Other studies followed a comparable way of scoring. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the mean and standard deviation. Chi-square analysis and a univariate logistic regression model were done to test for association between dependent and independent variables at a significance level of 5%, where a P-value < 0.05 was concluded as a significant association.
FINDINGS: The study findings reported that the prevalence of occupational stress amongst medical laboratory professionals at Namibia Institute of Pathology is 72.5%, CI (62.8-80.9). Chi-square analysis showed no relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and occupational stress as all variables had a p-value >0.05. Univariate Logistic regression analysis showed that some organizational factors were significantly associated with occupational stress (P-value<0.05). For the relationship of the laboratory professional with others, organization structure, and climate, and career and achievement, the odds that they will experience occupational stress is 5.098 95% CI (2.458;10.573), 7.786 95% CI (2.737;22.145), 3.487 95% CI (1.737;6.997) respectively.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: This study reported important findings regarding the prevalence and factors associated with occupational stress among medical laboratory settings in Namibia. While knowledge gaps on occupational stress exist in literature in this context, prevention and management strategies should be considered within medical laboratory settings to address the status of occupational stress among laboratory professionals. More appropriate are studies required to establish causal relationships between organizational factors and job stress.