Occupational health psychology: historical roots and future directions.

Occupational health psychology (OHP) is a term first coined by Jonathan Raymond in 1990, yet OHP has historical, international roots dating at least to the early decades of the twentieth century. It involves research and practice to create healthy workplaces. This article has 4 sections. The 1st section discusses psychology's long history of concern for occupational health in industrial organizations, beginning with Hugo Münsterberg's study of industrial accidents and human safety in the late 1800s. The 2nd section focuses on OHP's movement from the convergence of public health and preventive medicine with health and clinical psychology in an industrial/organizational context. The 3rd section addresses the central issues of organizational and individual health through the framework of preventive management. The article concludes with OHP case examples drawn from the Chaparral Steel Company, the U.S. Air Force, and Johnson & Johnson.

Introduction to the measurement of stress at work.

This article introduces a special section on the measurement of stress in occupational and work environments. It discusses stress as a creatively ambiguous term that, nonetheless, has important medical, behavioral, and psychological health consequences for people at work as well as away from work. The article discusses the importance of multiple medical and psychological measures for occupational stress assessments and offers an abbreviated conceptual framework for such measures. The 5 articles and 1 commentary that compose the section are briefly introduced.

Sexual harassment at work. Introduction.

This article introduces the special section on sexual harassment at work. It discusses the importance of sexual harassment as a continuing, chronic occupational health psychology problem to which the public health and preventive medicine notions of prevention may be applied. The article discusses the dilemmas in conducting and reviewing research on harassment, briefly examining some alternative methods of inquiry. The three articles in this section are introduced and the contrasting legal views of the problems in Europe and the United States are addressed. The preventive management of sexual harassment is suggested.

Health administration can be stressful ... but not necessarily distressful.

Stress is the natural response to personal and organizational demands. It is manifested in elevated heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and adrenaline in the blood. It is not something over which we have conscious control. Stress has both beneficial and destructive consequences. It is the destructive consequences with which we are the most familiar. These include tension, cardiovascular diseases, peptic ulcers, sexual dysfunctions, and depression. These are the undesirable consequences of stress; they constitute distress. They are not an inevitable consequence of stressful events. The purpose of this article is to discuss the unique demands of hospital administration and several methods of preventive stress management. There are no universal ways to prevent or treat distress. Preventive stress management and treatment aimed at increasing healthy stress and preventing distress must be established by each particular hospital or administrator interested in creating a healthy work environment.

Professional women: are distress and disease inevitable?

The unique sources of stress for professional women are discrimination, stereotyping, the marriage/work interface, and social isolation. The behavioral, physiological, and psychological consequences of mismanaged stress are examined and four preventive stress management moderators specifically for professional women suggested. These moderators that influence the stress-strain relationships are a mentor, locus of control, self-confidence, and self-awareness. Finally, a three-point research agenda is outlined for extending understanding of stress among professional women.

Decision-making among emergency room residents: preliminary observations and a decision model.

Emergency room residents face a range of clinical decisions and often call on senior residents or faculty members for help. The individual clinical decision process has frequently been analyzed, but little attention has been given to the social process in clinical decision-making. Based on data from interviews and over 100 hours of direct observation at two large urban general hospitals with busy emergency rooms staffed by medical and surgical residents, the authors suggest there are five basic decision situations. In each situation, the residents appeared to follow implicit decision patterns about involving other medical and surgical staff in the final clinical decision. The decision situations are nonacute, routine acute, nonroutine acute, multispecialty acute, and crisis. These situations call for individual, consultive, or consensual patterns in making decisions. The consequences of these patterns are explored. Improving residents' decision-making should contribute to improved understanding of the resident's role, better resident supervision, and better emergency room functioning.