Job demands and job control among occupational therapists in public sector in Finland

Abstract

Background

Although health care professionals’ increased job demands and strain have generated much public debate in recent years, the way in which occupational therapists’ job strain has developed remains unknown.

Objective

To examine how Finnish occupational therapists working in municipalities experienced job demands and control in 2014–2018 compared with physiotherapists and registered nurses.

Material and methods

Occupational therapists (OT, n = 107), physiotherapists (PT, n = 331) and registered nurses (RN, n = 1389) responded to repeated surveys in the Finnish Public Sector Study in 2014–2018. We used the Job Content Questionnaire and analyzed the data using repeated measures analysis of variance and multiple linear regression with generalized estimating equations to identify the trends and differences.

Results

More OTs had lower job demands and higher job control than PTs and RNs in each year of study. These differences were statistically significant. Most OTs had low job strain. The changes in job control and job demands of participants in different years were not statistically significant.

Conclusions

The OTs consistently experienced low job strain as compared to the PTs and RNs. Developing good practices in OT’s work may be beneficial for improving employee health and well-being and high-quality client care.

Keywords:

• Job control;
• job demand;
• job strain;
• job demand-control model;
• Karasek’s model;
• occupational therapists

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially funded by a grant from the Finnish Association of Occupational Therapy to Sanna-Maria Ruokangas for the data analysis of this research.