Occupational Stress, Burnout, Coping and Emotional Intelligence: Exploring Gender Differences among Different Occupational Groups of Healthcare Professionals

Occupational stress and burnout are the global issues in this present era of changing paradigms, where the protective effect of coping and facilitative effect of emotional intelligence has a significant role to play. The present study was conducted on a sample of 600 healthcare professionals from the private hospitals of Delhi, NCR. The sample included nursing, support staff (security, pharmacy, front office, housekeeping and dietetics/food and beverages staff) and doctors with equal number of male and female participants The Occupational Stress Index, Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI-HSS), Ways of Coping Questionnaire and Multidimensional Measure of Emotional Intelligence were the measures used in the study. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to explore the gender differences among the three occupational groups. Results indicate that the main effect for gender and occupation type is significant in various dimensions of occupational stress, burnout, coping and emotional intelligence; whereas the interaction effect of gender and occupation type is significant only for the managing emotions dimension of emotional intelligence.