Team Stress Research Paper

A lot is written about the impact of stress on the individual, but little is written about the impact of stress on the wider team. There is little doubt that there are occasions when stress affects the whole team because of a shared experience (for example, increased workloads or a particularly distressing incident in the workplace, such as the death of a young patient) while at other times stress affects the team because an individual is ill or going through a rough patch at home. Whatever the cause, stress can impact the whole team and this could manifest itself in any number of ways. Stress in early definitions was stated it in terms of a stimulus, response, or the interaction between the two (Cooper, C. L., Dewe, P., & O’Driscoll,

As a manager, you have a ‘duty of care’ towards the people in your team. This duty includes a responsibility not to cause foreseeable harm or injury. The duty of care may be breached when a manager or organization does something harmful (a deliberate act of harm) or fails to do something (negligence) and so fails to prevent harm from occurring. A manager may be in breach of their duty of care if they fail to prevent or reduce the likelihood of foreseeable work-related stress or by allowing a stressful work situation to continue. Staff retention is also better in teams where stress is better managed (Anthony et al, 2005). Work stress reflects poor compatibility between the individual and the situations that one may face in the vicinity of the work. The stress occurs in situations where the employee perceives that his capacity to face work requirements represents a significant burden on him (Anderson R. 2003). The physical changes (rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure) and psychological changes (stress and anxiety) of an individual is the process of creating or willing to adapt compressor environmental variables (Bummer K. & B.H. Newberry,

A positive attitude and valuing staff as equals sends a message to the team that they are cared about and is a key component in the development of trust (Ellis, 2015). The absence of leadership with respect to the team, and failure of the manager to talk to the team as a whole are both potentially stressful for the team. Regular, structured contact with the team as a group and staff members individually is important as these provide opportunities to talk to the manager face to face. As well as time with their manager, staff will benefit from structured time with a peer, mindfulness sessions, time outs and clinical supervision (Koivu et al, 2012) can be helpful for the staff group — this may prove especially important at times of high stress. Perhaps the single most important means of managing stress is to generate a positive team culture. Culture is “the psychological environment that exists in a unit, team or organisation and may be seen in the ways in which staff interact with each other, with other professionals and teams and the patients that they care for” (Ellis and Abbott,