Stress Impacts on Performance
The demands placed on healthcare workers means they are extremely likely to experience stress. Feeling pressured or anxious—whether that pressure comes from the job itself or from outside factors—can increase opportunities for errors during critical moments. By understanding the causes and impacts of stress, your organization can be positioned to develop procedures and policies that mitigate the impacts of stress and enhance performance.
The Science of Stress
Stress can be defined as the perception that an environmental situation is beyond one’s psychological resources. There has been extensive research on the impacts of stress on biological and behavioral processes. The effects on performance are real and measurable.
Human Performance Scientists generally recognize two primary types of Stress:
Stress can impact people differently. In general, stress causes a cascade of physiological changes that reduce executive functions. It is imperative that healthcare workers maintain their full cognitive skills during critical moments. Unfortunately, both acute and chronic stress negatively impact exactly these skills during the times when they are most needed.
- Impaired Decision-making
- Inability to Recognize Problems
- Missing Important Information
- Reduced Motor Skills
- Memory Impairment
- Reduced Ability to Focus
- Headaches, Back Pain, Heart Problems
- Reduced Sleep Efficacy
Because stress is related to how we perceive our environment, something stressful to one person may not be stressful to another. In general though, both major and minor life events can be causes of acute or chronic stress. Additionally, relational issues, shift work, and personal financial problems can contribute to stress as well.
Fatigue in Healthcare Operations
Stress causes the activation of at least two different physiological pathways. One pathway provokes the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine and is involved in the fight or flight response. The second pathway results in the release of cortisol into the blood stream (sometimes known as the ‘stress hormone’). Downstream, stress alters brain function, impairing or altering the functioning of the amygdala, the pons, the hypothalamus, thalamus, and the frontal cortex, which are the very brain areas required during stressful situations. The negative impacts on task performance of these neurological and physiological changes occur after both acute stress, such as that which might be associated with a critical incident on the job, as well as from the longer-term impacts of chronic stress.
Although too much stress negatively impacts performance, so too does too little stress. In fact, the best performance occurs under moderate stress, where people are neither too unconcerned by their environment, nor find their environment too difficult to manage.
Every person’s performance is impacted when they experience acute or chronic stress
Emergent Can Help
The uniquely stress-inducing job responsibilities of healthcare workers make it critical for organizations to examine stress-inducing situations within your organization. Emergent can help to identify factors contributing to stress and develop stress management initiatives directly targeting your organizational stress profile.
Click below to schedule a call to discuss your stress management needs:
