Strategies used to handle stress by academic physicians at a university hospital

Research is limited regarding occupational stress and coping strategies among academic physicians; professionals whose work situation includes the three areas of clinical practice, research, and teaching. The aim was to gain knowledge of stress-coping strategies used by academic physicians.

Seventeen academic physicians employed at the University Hospital, Linköping, Sweden.

Qualitative analyses were conducted of data from five focus-group interviews.

We identified eight different categories of coping strategies, e.g. self-awareness, time management, to cut corners, and to be in control. We also attempted to fit the dimensions of coping strategies into the models proposed by Folkman and Lazarus and Beehr and McGrath, respectively. The strategies were predominantly used to prevent stress from occurring, to manage anticipated stress, or to handle stress when occurring. Furthermore, the majority of the strategies identified could be placed in the problem-focused category, which we divided in a behavioural and a cognitive sub-category and in a new cognitive problem-focused and emotion-focused category.

The study contributes to a wider understanding of the stress coping strategies academic physicians use. Further studies are needed to determine the consequences of these findings in order to enable the design of measures to reduce and prevent stress among academic physicians.