Descriptive study of stress and satisfaction at work in the Saragossa university services and administration staff

BACKGROUND: The notion of stress in connection with the work environment became an important topic during the 1970's, when the first studies on the subject were published and the term of work stress was first coined. In 1974, Freudenberger proposed the term burnout to refer to the condition of physical and emotional exhaustion, as well as the associated negative attitudes, resulting from the intense interaction in working with people. The aim of our study is to examine burnout and job satisfaction in Saragossa University Services and Administration Staff (SAS) and detect the main factors which could contribute to too much stress, because job stress has emerged as a major psychosocial influence on mental health, associated with burnout. METHODS: 24 people from the Services and Administration Staff in the University of Saragossa participated in the study. The research was carried out during the implementation of a module on Stress Management organised by the University of Saragossa and commissioned to the Unit for Research in Physical Therapy (University School of Health Sciences) from that University. This research is an exploratory research to improve the stress management program. A personal interview was carried out and additionally, participants were given the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Scale of Satisfaction at Work of Warr, Cook & Wall. RESULTS: However using small sample this is worth to state that participants present most of them low burnout levels in the burnout scale. Only in one person high exhaustion level was reflected, even though other seven showed mean levels; in the professional self-esteem section, most of them showed high self-esteem, with two cases of low self-esteem and five with mean level. With regard to satisfaction people participating in the study show mean levels in intrinsic as much as in extrinsic factors and general satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: Services and Administration Staff from the University of Saragossa shows low burnout levels linked with high professional self-esteem and low emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. It has been found also medium levels in work satisfaction probably related with the continuous quality improvement efforts in the academics environment to create protective factors in decreasing levels of job stress. These results show that not only personality or temperament have an influence on burnout and stress, also the job conditions are related with these diseases. These aspects should be taken into account in the design of stress prevention programme at work.