Staff stress in head injury rehabilitation

Recent research has suggested that staff working with head-injured (HI) patients experience higher levels of psychopathology than those working with non-HI patients, mirroring findings obtained with relatives of HI subjects. The present study examined this issue further while controlling for the influence of a range of occupational and extraneous, non-occupational factors which moderate the experience of staff stress. The results indicated that nurses involved in the rehabilitation of HI patients did not differ significantly from those working with non-HI patients on measures of overall stress, job satisfaction or psychopathology. The implications of these findings are discussed, with particular relevance to the potentially important protective effect of staff-patient ratios.