HPSCS

Health Professions Stress and Coping Scale

C.A. Ripamonti, P. Steca and A. Prunas
University of Milano-Bicocca”

GENERAL OVERVIEW

The HPSCS is a self-report questionnaire that proposes a series of potentially stressful working situations in relation to which both the level of perceived stress and four possible coping mechanisms used to tackle it are measured. These features make it an innovative tool, as compared to others involving responses to situations that are generically defined as stressful or problematic without referring to a specific working environment.

KEY FEATURES

• Five scales for the assessment of perceived stress
• Versions for doctors and nurses
• Scales for the assessment of coping strategies for each stress-generating area, with total score for each

STRUCTURE

The HPSCS comes in two versions, containing the situations defined as more problematic for doctors and nurses respectively.

Assessment scales for perceived stress (doctors version):

• Clinical emergency: situations of elevated clinical emergency or sudden deterioration in the patient’s condition.
• Tackling death: situations of serious or chronic illness of the patient, communication of highly negative diagnosis or prospective death of the patient.
• Problematic relations with patients.
• Personal attack and unforeseen admin problems: situations of attack or unfair conduct on the part of colleagues, superiors or patients’ relatives, and unforeseen administrative difficulties.
• Personal devaluation: when the doctor has the impression that his/her demands, training requirements and career advancement are not supported.

Assessment scales for perceived stress (nurses version):

• Clinical emergency: situations of elevated clinical emergency or sudden deterioration in the clinical condition, risk or actual death of the patient.
• Problematic relations with patients and their relatives.
• Personal attack: situations of attack or unfair conduct on the part of colleagues, superiors or patients’ relatives.
• Personal devaluation: when the nurse has the impression that his/her demands, suggestions and training requirements are not heeded.
• Administrative contingencies: difficulties on the administrative front that compromise the performance of duties or interfere with private life.

Assessment scales for employment of coping strategies (both versions):

• Coping centred on solving the problem: the most appropriate solutions are sought, drawing broadly on personal experience.
• Coping centred on the request for support: the support, help and advice of other people is sought.
• Coping centred on emotional distress: an emotional reaction in which the individual is incapable of adequately managing and controlling his/her emotions.
• Coping centred on avoiding the problem: the individual attempts to ignore the problematic situation at cognitive or behavioural level.

UTILISATION

Clinical and health psychology. The HPSCS can be used to assess specific situations in which professional efficiency is threatened and there is a risk of burnout, at both individual level, and for an entire health department or unit. The assessment of the modes of coping employed in the five identified domains makes it possible to plan preventive strategies and targeted intervention. The test can also be applied to assess the efficacy of the interventions by being administered both before and after.

Education and training. In the training courses for doctors and nurses the HPSCS could be usefully applied in modules addressing training in patient relations, where its utilisation could prove useful in identifying the experiences perceived as most stress-generating and the specific strategies that the professional in training adopts to tackle them.

Internet administration, scoring and reporting available