Does sector matter in House Officers performances?; A Cross sectional study

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. IntroductionHouse officers experience extreme levels of stress during their training period. There is significant variation in level of stress among house officers of public sector hospitals to those of private hospitals because of the OPD input per day, excessive paper work and sample collection for lab investigations. None of the study has been done to find any variation in the stress level of house officers among different hospitals.ObjectiveObjective of current study is to compare the stress levels among house officers working in Public and Private Hospitals of Karachi.MethodA descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-designed and self-explanatory questionnaire for identification of stress among house officers of government and private tertiary care hospitals of Karachi. Cronbach Alpha was calculated which was found to be 0.804. A multistage, non-probability sampling technique was used. The data gathered was analyzed with SPSS version 22. ANOVA with Post Hoc Tukey's test and a five-point Likert scale was used.ResultsThe mean age of the participants in this study was 24 ± 1.2 years. About ¾ of the total sample was female, making it the majority. Variations was non-significant in positive attitudes in-between hospitals, but in negative attitudes, was highly significant (p=<0.001). To check for inter hospital variations, the post hoc Tukey's test was applied and significant variation was observed between Altamash Hospital (Private) and Civil (Public) (<0.001) and that of JPMC (Public) was also significant (p=0.027). Other than Altamash, the only other significant variation was observed for Civil (Public) and Baqai (Private) hospital with a p-value of 0.016. Weekly working hours played no significant role in positive attitudes in both sectors, while in negative attitudes it was significant in Public sector (p=0.008)ConclusionIt can be concluded that house officers of Public sectors are suffering from high levels of stress, as compared to that of Private sector, but are more confident in making decisions at the workplace. It is important that concern authorities should take action to reduce working hours and emergency calls so that we can control chronic stress which is a risk factor towards depression.