The Impact of Occupational Stress in Female Healthcare Workers

By [Student’s Name]

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Introduction

There are around 450,000 individuals with intellectual disability living in Australia. According to Reppermund et al., (2019, p. 1-2), individuals with intellectual disability deserve the right to get access to high-standard healthcare facilities that significantly meets their requirements and also cooperate with them to lead an active and healthy life. The State-wide Intellectual Disability Mental Health Outreach Service (SIDMHOS) is considered a state-wide service that assists people with developmental or intellectual disabilities to access appropriate psychological health facilities. NSW is considered to fund such mental health care facilities in Australia (NSW Health, 2021). In the mental healthcare facility in NSW, both male and female employees are involved in providing care for people with intellectual disabilities (NSW Health, 2021).

A study was performed by Fotheringham et al., (2021, p.2-3), for investigating the competitive advantage of a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace in Australia and there a significant prevalence of mental unwellness was identified among around 27% of the mental healthcare employees in NSW identified specifically during the Covid-19 period. Considering the identified gap in the availability of sufficient evidence on the impact of working with intellectual disability on female employees who are working in mental health sectors in NSW.

The study performed by Howlett et al., (2015, p. 137-138), suggested higher service requirements for individuals with intellectual disabilities in the NSW mental healthcare facilities along with the further allocation of particular resources. Key issues that emerged in the research regarding the poor service availability and lack of care standards include poor availability of skilled mental healthcare professionals and appropriate resources. Poor availability of staff significantly results in increased work pressure on the available staff that further leads to work-load associated stress, anxiety, and burnout among the current healthcare professionals.

Foster et al., (2020, p. 57-58), performed a study to investigate whether is there any difference in terms of the severity of the impact of such issues on male and female mental healthcare workers in Australia, and the findings suggested a comparatively higher negative impact of work-associated stress on female mental healthcare workers and it was mostly because of emotional factors and coping up skills among them (Foster et al., 2020, p. 66-68). Despite the availability of the above-mentioned information, a significant gap is there in the availability of relevant articles on the impact of intellectual disability-related care stress on female employees or the healthcare professionals at mental healthcare units in NSW.

According to Out et al., (2020, p.2-3), addressing the mental health issues of care providers is essential to ensure their health and well-being. Focusing on this issue and the relevance of the topic considering the research gap as mentioned above, in the subsequent section, the author is to prepare a relevant research question.

Considering the identified gap the research question that has been developed by the author in this study is as follows:

How does working in intellectual disability impact female employees who work in mental health sectors in NSW?

 

Literature review

A study was performed by Srasuebkul et al., (2021, p. 325-331), for investigating and describing the characteristics of individuals with intellectual disabilities in NSW. In order to investigate the research objective, the researchers of the study have designed a retrospective cohort data linkage and used the NSW mental healthcare database of 2014 to 2015 to identify the individuals who used publicly funded in or outpatient psychological health services (Srasuebkul et al., 2021, p. 328). The key outcomes of the study were measured using some key variables, for example, the number of treatment days, bed days, and expenditures of publicly funded psychological health services.

Based on the findings of the research, individuals with intellectual disabilities comprised around 1.1% of the total population of NSW. However, around 6.3% of the individuals who used public psychological health facilities, and around 12% of public psychological health expenditures in time of 2014 to 2015 were specifically for individuals with intellectual disabilities (Srasuebkul et al., 2021, p. 329-331). In comparison with metropolitan local health districts, the overall expenditures at public psychological health services were significantly lower for regional and rural LHDs and significantly higher for specialty mental health centres (Srasuebkul et al., 2021, p. 329-331).

Another study was performed by Scanlan et al., (2020, p. 1-15), in order to investigate the workplace experiences of psychological health workers in NSW, Australia. Consumer-peer workers are considered as people with lived experience of psychological health issues and as well as recovery who are employed to utilise their lived experience to assist others. Considering a significant gap in the literature on the availability of relevant articles, the researchers of the study have invited mental healthcare workers in NSW to accomplish a survey designed to investigate their workplace experience. The key measures that were considered as variables in this study include job satisfaction, turnover, job burnout, job resources, and job demands of the employees (Scanlan et al., 2020, p. 3-4).

A total of 67 workers who worked at the mental health care facilities in the NSW participated in the research. As per the findings of the study, a significant correlation was identified among the key variables for example, disengagement, job satisfaction, turnover intention and exhaustion. Social support, job resources, feedback, job control, recognition and rewards were found to be associated with positive workplace experiences (Scanlan et al., 2020, p.12-13). One of the most common positive aspects of the position of the employees was connecting with the individuals who seek support for the mental health issues and one of the most common negative positional aspects was the workplace culture and clinicians’ attitude.

A study was performed by Ee et al., (2022, p. 758-761), in order to investigate the experiences of psychological healthcare professionals providing care to adults with intellectual disabilities and associated psychological health challenges. In order to investigate the issue, the researchers have performed a systematic review and used findings from 14 relevant primary articles. Considering the findings of the 14 primary articles, the researchers have developed three key themes including ‘comprehending the person, ‘relational interaction’, and ‘organisational issues’. As a whole, the researchers of the study have identified several issues among the psychological healthcare professionals who provide care to people with intellectual disabilities in mental health settings, for example, excessive work-associated stress, anxiety, and low morale, and these are associated with the poor clinical output of patients, poor feedback from patients and their family members and poor cooperation from other staffs of healthcare centres (Ee et al., 2022, p. 770-775).

A study was performed by Foster et al., (2020, p. 56-68), to investigate the mental health care-associated stress on male and female healthcare workers in Australian mental healthcare centres. In the findings of the study, psychological distress was identified among nurses who work in mental healthcare settings in Australia and the psychological well-being of the participants was significantly lower due to carer or consumer-associated stressors as one of their most common challenges in the healthcare facilities. Poor workplace resilience, fatigue, and burnout were associated with the workplace environment or workplace culture (Foster et al., 2020, p. 58-62).

The prevalence of poor mental health well-being was more common among female healthcare professionals than among male healthcare professionals. The higher work-related stress or burnout among female workers than male workers was mostly because of the gender-associated stress-handling ability of the nurse professionals. It can be due to the higher vulnerabilities of female workers to being exposed to sexual harassment from patients in psychiatric facilities and moral distress and demotivation from the issue and discrepancy of female workers between their own attitudinal dimension and how psychiatric care should be provided.

In summary of the literature review, it can be stated that a high prevalence of patients with intellectual disabilities identified at NHS significantly increases the workload and stress associated with handling psychiatric patients for the healthcare workers. Psychological workers at NSW have reported higher stress, burnout, and psychological issues due to poor work satisfaction, morale, and values. The impact was found significantly higher in female workers than male healthcare professionals and it was mostly because of the vulnerability of female workers to sexual abuse and the discrepancy between their own attitudinal dimension and how psychiatric care should be provided.

Conclusion

In this study, the author has identified a key gap in terms of the availability of relevant peer-reviewed articles on the impact of providing care for people with intellectual disabilities in mental healthcare facilities of NSW on female employees/ healthcare professionals. The relevance of the research is associated with the need for ensuring the health and well-being of health and social care providers.

A literature review section has been developed by the author further focusing on the key direction of the research question where it has been identified that work-related stress is common among psychiatric healthcare workers at NSW that is evidenced by workplace burnout, and workplace issues, for example, anxiety and depression. The impact of the said issues was found to be higher in female workers and male workers mostly because of poor gender-associated contributors for coping with workplace stress, sexual abuse, and discrepancy of achieving desired care outcomes.

 

Reference

Ee, J., Stenfert Kroese, B., & Rose, J. (2022). Experiences of mental health professionals providing services to adults with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems: A systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative research studies. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, 26(3), 758-781. DOI: 10.1177/17446295211016182

Foster, K., Roche, M., Giandinoto, J. A., & Furness, T. (2020). Workplace stressors, psychological well‐being, resilience, and caring behaviours of mental health nurses: A descriptive correlational study. International journal of mental health nursing, 29(1), 56-68. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12610

Fotheringham, P., Anderson, T., Shaw, M., Jewitt, J., Storey, H., Hutchings, O., … & Gupta, L. (2021). Control of COVID-19 in Australia through quarantine: the role of special health accommodation (SHA) in New South Wales, Australia. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10244-7

Howlett, S., Florio, T., Xu, H., & Trollor, J. (2015). Ambulatory mental health data demonstrates the high needs of people with an intellectual disability: results from the New South Wales intellectual disability and mental health data linkage project. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 49(2), 137-144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004867414536933

NSW Health (2021) Adults – statewide intellectual disability mental health outreach service for adults, Statewide Intellectual Disability Mental Health Outreach Service for adults – Adults. NSW Health . Available at: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/mentalhealth/services/adults/Pages/intellectual-disability-adults.aspx (Accessed: October 22, 2022).

Otu, A., Charles, C. H., & Yaya, S. (2020). Mental health and psychosocial well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: The invisible elephant in the room. International journal of mental health systems, 14(1), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13033-020-00371-w

Reppermund, S., Heintze, T., Srasuebkul, P., Reeve, R., Dean, K., Smith, M., … & Trollor, J. (2019). Health and wellbeing of people with intellectual disability in New South Wales, Australia: a data linkage cohort. BMJ open, 9(9), e031624.

Scanlan, J. N., Still, M., Radican, J., Henkel, D., Heffernan, T., Farrugia, P., … & English, J. (2020). Workplace experiences of mental health consumer peer workers in New South Wales, Australia: a survey study exploring job satisfaction, burnout and turnover intention. BMC psychiatry, 20(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02688-9

Srasuebkul, P., Cvejic, R., Heintze, T., Reppermund, S., & Trollor, J. N. (2021). Public mental health service use by people with intellectual disability in New South Wales and its costs. Medical Journal of Australia, 215(7), 325-331. https://doi.org/10.5694/mja2.51166