Now, It Is Time to Consider Job Stress in the Field of Gastroenterology

In the last decade, rapid changes in medical practice, including rising demand for healthcare services, academic specialization, and increased responsibility for patients, has had a great influence on physicians’ job stress and burnout, where the latter signifies a long term stress reaction characterized by a loss of enthusiasm for work, depersonalization, and a lack of a sense of personal accomplishment. Shanafelt et al. reported that 30% to 65% of United States physicians across medical specialties experienced at least one symptom of burnout and several studies have shown that there are high levels of job stress and burnout in surgery, oncology, and emergency medicine. Moreover, previous studies have demonstrated that extreme job stress and burnout lead not only to negative personal effects for physicians including increased absenteeism, job turnover, early retirement, and mental well-being problems, but also an increased risk of medical errors, that contributes to adverse effects on the quality of patient care. Until now, there have been few investigations of job stress and burnout in the field of gastroenterology. Keswani et al. showed that most gastroenterologists (GEs) in the United States experienced moderate levels of burnout and junior GE (those with 3 or fewer years of experience) had higher levels of stress related to endoscopic practice than senior GE regardless of interventional procedures. For nurses, Son and Yang reported that endoscopic unit nurses in Korea suffered a great deal of stress, similar to what nurses in intensive care units experienced. In this issue of Clinical Endoscopy, Nam et al. analyzed job stress levels by using the Korean occupational stress scale (KOSS) and assessing job satisfaction among 59 health-care providers working in teams in the endoscopy units of university-affiliated hospitals in Korea. They reported that nurses had significantly higher levels of job stress (48.92±7.97) compared to doctors (42.59±6.37), and that the total job stress scores for the endoscopy unit workers (46.39±7.81) were lower than those of a national sample of Korean workers (51.23±8.83). Additionally, job stress was significantly associated with job demand, insufficient job control, and job insecurity in endoscopy units. Because previously reported investigations were performed according to occupation, and there was no data about job stress in the field of gastroenterology in Korea, this investigation has important meaning in that this is the first study evaluating job stress and job satisfaction of endoscopic unit team workers in actual clinical practice in Korea. However, this study revealed several issues that we must consider. First, the method used to evaluate job stress in this study seems to be inadequate for assessing workers in endosReceived: April 29, 2016 Revised: May 11, 2016 Accepted: May 11, 2016 Correspondence: Gwang Ho Baik Department of Internal Medicine, Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital, Hallym University College of Medicine, 77 Sakju-ro, Chuncheon 24253, Korea Tel: +82-33-240-5821, Fax: +82-33-241-8064, E-mail: [email protected]