The interaction between voice disorders and stress for work ability of teachers

Abstract

Objective

Less attention has been paid to the interaction between voice disorders, stress, and indoor environmental quality for work ability in teachers. Therefore, our aim was to study whether lower work ability associated more strongly when the variables of voice disorders and stress at work were combined as opposed to evaluating these two factors separately.

Methods

We conducted a questionnaire study including validated self-assessment of work ability and a technical assessment of school buildings utilizing a sample of 1198 and a subsample (n = 538) of Finnish teachers.

Results

When combined, voice disorders and stress at work had a stronger association to decreased work ability than when they were evaluated separately. The occurrence of stress was more prevalent in poor and moderate work ability than the occurrence of voice disorders. Nine out of 10 of the teachers who had neither voice disorders nor stress reported good work ability, while four out of 10 of the teachers who suffered from both voice disorders and stress had poor work ability. As regards the background variables, nearly half of the subjects working in the non-problem buildings have neither stress nor voice disorders.

Discussion

We recommend offering support for reducing stress at work to improve teachers’ work performance. The findings also support the maintenance of school buildings and keeping them in good condition. Follow-up studies are needed to investigate the possible effects of voice disorders and the associated variables on work ability.

Keywords:

• Voice disorder
• stress at work
• work ability
• teacher
• school building

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Elizabeth Nyman M.A. for providing language help.

Geolocation information

Finland, Europe.

Disclosure statement

Tuula Putus has financial interests in Orion Pharma Ltd. without any involvement in the study. The other authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by (anonymized); and (anonymized); neither of which had any involvement in the study.

Notes on contributors

Hanna Vertanen-Greis

Hanna Vertanen-Greis, PhD, is a post-doctoral researcher in the field of voice ergonomics. She has graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Turku. Previously, Ms. Vertanen-Greis was a music instructor and graduated also from the Sibelius Academy (MMus) and the University of Helsinki (MSc). Apart from a strong musical education, she studied logopedics as well as educational sciences and administration.

Eliisa Löyttyniemi

Eliisa Löyttyniemi, MSc, is a biostatistician, who worked for several pharmaceutical companies between 1993 and 2010, and then continued working in a company that developed neonatal and newborn screening technologies. From 2013, she has worked at the University of Turku where she is responsible for analyzing the research data and teaching of medical students.

Jukka Uitti

Jukka Uitti, MD, PhD, is a professor emeritus of Occupational Health Care and Occupational Medicine at the University of Tampere. He also worked as the chief physician at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. He is qualified as a specialist in Occupational Health Care and in occupational medicine. He was awarded the title of docent at the University of Tampere in 2004. His research areas are, inter alia, epidemiology, occupational medicine, and asthma.

Tuula Putus

Tuula Putus, MD, PhD, is a professor of Occupational Health and Environmental Medicine at the University of Turku. She is qualified as a specialist in occupational medicine. She was awarded the title of docent at the University of Kuopio in 2010. Her research areas are, inter alia, occupational health and medicine, environmental medicine.