Is My Stress Greater Than Yours? A Comparison of Policemen and Firemen

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that police work is stressiul both because of the nature <if operational duties and because <if the organisational climate in which police officers fulfil these duties. Few studies have compared, however, the views of police officers with those <if other emergency personnel. This paper compares large samples of policemen and firemen in relation to many aspects <if their work, job satisfaction and several health indices. The results confirm that police work and firf!fighting generate sources of stress for those involved in such work, but that policemen more commonly report health problems and identify such factors as shift work and long hours as being damaging to their personal life. Firemen, on the other hand, reported more job satisfaction than did the policemen.

Stress and burnout among colorectal surgeons and colorectal nurse specialists working in the National Health Service

“…Each of the attributes is rated on a seven‐point scale and the total score for each subscale is categorized as low, average or high. High burnout is characterized by high scores on the emotional exhaustion (central quality of burnout – reflects the stress dimension) and depersonalization (attempt by the clinician to distance themselves from patients) scales and low scores on the personal accomplishment scale (feeling of accomplishment/achievement) [15]; the Coping Questionnaire has been used previously in a study of work‐related stress in police officers, prison officers, psychiatric nurses and firemen [16,17]; other questions including level of job satisfaction, retirement intentions, perception of adequacy of communication and management training; additional comments. Respondents were encouraged to add comments at the end of the booklet.…”

“…the Coping Questionnaire has been used previously in a study of work‐related stress in police officers, prison officers, psychiatric nurses and firemen [16,17];…”

Professional Police Officers Behaviour in Critical Situations

“…The particularity of the work of police officers is related to the fact that they have to work and make decisions in emergency circumstances more often than representatives of other professions (Šalkauskaitė et al, 2015). Alexander and Walker (2000) point out that a police officer may, over the course of his/her career, be repeatedly involved in situations which endanger his/her safety or even his/her life. Being involved in these situations a person can feel insecure in his/her daily live.…”

Mentoring for mental health: A mixed-method study of the benefits of formal mentoring programmes in the English police force

“…To deepen our understanding of how mentoring may inform both mentors' and mentees' workplace anxieties, we examined English police officers who volunteered to participate in a formal mentoring programme as either mentors or mentees. This is an appropriate setting as mental health issues are particularly prominent within occupations that play important social roles, such as the military (Hatch et al, 2013;Caddick et al, 2015), medical professions (Yelin et al, 1996), firefighters and, police officers (Alexander & Walker, 1999). To ascertain the impact of a mentoring programme on anxiety, in particular, we employed an abductive approach that lends itself to the use of mixed methods (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012;Wheeldon, & Åhlberg, 2012).…”