Stress and General Practice

Stress in general practice in the UK is a regular feature of everyday life according to a whole series of research studies over recent years. Increasing stress is a feature of society as a whole and general practitioners’ ability to deal with stress in themselves may also influence their ability to help others to do the same. Stress is an ambiguous word that is used on different occasions to denote positive or negative strain in a physical or emotional context. Thus it is difficult to agree a common definition, and researchers have often measured the causes and effects of stress on general practitioners or the practice, rather than the quantity of stress that is present. For the purposes of this document, stress is defined as the "physical, emotional and mental strain resulting from the mismatch between an individual and his/her environment", which results from a "three way relationship between demands on a person, that person's feelings about those demands and their ability to cope with those demands" Stress is most likely to occur in situations where: demands are high; the amount of control an individual has is low; and, there is limited support or help available for the individual.