Stress Management

The stress of change
The aim of this reflective assignment is to demonstrate how from my own experience, I have developed an understanding of the various elements associated with and which contribute to the development of stress within a changing workplace environment.
There have been many different definitions of what stress is, whether used by psychologists, medics, management consultants or others. Bamber (2011) recognised that there seems to have been something approaching open warfare between competing definitions, views have been passionately held and aggressively defended. What complicates this according to Toohey (1994) is that intuitively we all feel that we know what stress is, as it is something we have all experienced. A definition should therefore be obvious…except that it is not. Hall (2004) stated that one problem with a single definition, is that stress is made up of many things: It is a family of related experiences, pathways, responses and outcomes caused by a range of different events or circumstances. Different people experience different aspects and identify with different definitions. For the purpose of this piece i will be focusing on stress experienced as a result of organisational change. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identified change as one of the six key areas that can contribute to work related stress. Their key areas form the basis of Stress Management policies in many Organisations. Change is a significant factor that impacts on many health care professionals. In the continuous changing and developing world of healthcare, it is a high priority for healthcare providers to restructure and implement improvements with the latest technologies and systems, whilst managing resources carefully to ensure each innovation is cost effective. To achieve crucial savings there are reductions in staff numbers and resources but an expectation that teams will continue to provide the same level of care by finding

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