Stress and Fatigue in Police Personel and how it affects them - Research Paper Example

Research has also revealed that male and female police personnel perceive stress and fatigue differently (Zhao, et al; 2002).According to Keinan & Pines (2007), professional stress always directly impacts work performance of the employees; since police job is a sensitive and significant profession, there should be some strategy to reduce this work stress faced by police personnel. 1.2 Nature of Job Dealing with stress greatly depends upon one’s coping skills, however, Gaines & Jermier, 1983) have identified that job related fatigue is encouraged and elevated due to emotional exhaustion in high stress organizations (Zhao, et al; 2002).

Police department in itself is a high stress department where police personnel get exposure to all dark and criminal sides of life. Gaines & Jermier (1983) further point out that the nature of police job and mandate of police in society is a bit contradictory and emotionally critical; which is why special attention is needed in this field to devise and implement stress reduction strategies. 2. REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE A lot of academic and scholarly literature is available on the topic. Some of the relevant researches are reviewed under the three categories below: 2.

1Causes of Stress and Fatigue among Police Personnel and its effects Abdollahi (2002) conducted a detailed review based study to investigate the stressors faced by police force personnel. The results of the study revealed four categories of stressors: Intra personal (Factors related to personality), Occupational, organizational and health related. According to Haines (2003), more police officers face stress due top relationships rather than job, because the tough nature of police job impacts their personal and family life.

In another study, White and colleagues (1985) explored the factors that cause stress among police professional and found that these stressors can be broadly distributed into the three categories namely: physical or psychological threat, lack of support and evaluation systems. Research has also focused on the job burnout in prison department. One study by Keinan & Pines (2007) has revealed that not only there are differences in perceived stress among personnel from various police departments like security, administration and treatment; differences are also found in stress level experience as per seniority position or rank wise.

The main stressors identified include: working extra shifts without compensation, low salary packages and excessive work load. Boyce (2006) has explained stressors faced by police personnel in terms of external and internal factors. External factors of stress as per Boyce (2006) include: negative publicity, untimely court appearances, distorted police related press accounts, negative attitude and discouragement from friends and family on choice of profession. 2.2 Gender differences in Police Stress According to Boyce (2006), the female police personnel face an extra stress of proving themselves since their ‘handling the situation’ skills are more often questioned as compared to those of males.

Gachter and colleagues (2009) investigated gender differences in stress among police personnel. They measured stress on two scales, one for physical and other for psychological stress. Their findings were