A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF JOB STRESS AND BURNOUT AMONG NIGERIAN PRISON OFFICERS AT UYO PRISON AND STATE PRISONS HEADQUARTERS, AKWA IBOM STATE

Abstract

Background: Job stress indicates workers’ opinion toward the workplace and work itself and is recognised as a major challenge to workers’ health and to the healthiness of an organisation. It involves enormous suffering and huge costs to society, long term exposure to job stress which has not been successfully dealt with will result in burnout and other diseases like musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular diseases, gastric ulcers and depression. Burnout is a long term stress reaction and is most commonly described as psychological syndrome of emotional exhaustion, cynicism and reduced occupational accomplishment. Stress is experienced by different occupational types and job roles but level of stress varies among the different occupations with some occupations having peculiar in-built stress characteristics and also some careers being more stressful than others. The job of a prison officer in particular has been rated to be more stressful among other occupations and the prison staff that work directly with inmates are said to be more stressed than other prison staff.
Objectives: The aim of the study was to compare job stress and burnout among Nigerian prison officers (custodial officers) at Uyo prison and (administrative officers) at the State prisons headquarters, Akwa Ibom State.
Materials and Methods: The study was a comparative cross sectional study conducted in Uyo prison and the State prisons headquarters, Akwa Ibom State from Dec. 2010 to Jan 2012. Convenient sampling method was used to pick Uyo prison out of five prison stations in the State to represent where officers (custodial officers) work directly with inmates. The State prisons headquarters was taken to represent where the staff (administrative officers) do not work with inmates. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data collection. The quantitative data was collected using pretested,
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standardised, adapted, structured and self-administered questionnaires from 280 participants. The qualitative data was collected using key informant interview guide.
Results: Majority of the respondents (95.4%) at Uyo prison and (94.2%) at the State prisons headquarters had mild level of stress. The level of burnout in the two prison stations was low as is evident by the respondents high level of occupational accomplishments (60.8% in Uyo Prison and 61.7% in the State prisons headquarters), low level of emotional exhaustion (56.2% at Uyo prison and 61.7% at the State prisons headquarters) and low of level of cynicism (56.9% at Uyo prison and 47.5% at State prisons headquarters). Fifty three point eight percent of the respondents at Uyo prison as compared to 58.3% at State prisons headquarters had mild scores for job related tension. Officers of senior cadre at Uyo prison reported higher stress level and emotional exhaustion than the other cadres and as compared to those at the State prisons headquarters. There was a statistically significant association between the officers’ cadre, level of stress (p=0.001) and the level of exhaustion (p=0.001) at Uyo prison.
Conclusion: Findings from the quantitative and qualitative surveys showed that prison officers at Uyo prison and State prisons headquarters reported low level of stress. Similarly, the level of burnout experienced by the officers at both prison stations was also low as it is evident by their high scores for occupational accomplishments, low scores for emotional exhaustion and low scores for cynicism. Factors that can be responsible job stress and burnout such as participation and control at work, job demands, role conflict and role ambiguity and work-family conflict were not statistically significant in this study. The officers reported mild level job related tension at the two prison locations. Improved continuous training and retraining programmes should be instituted to enhance optimal staff performance as staff are less likely to experience work related stress when the demands and pressure of work are matched to their knowledge and abilities.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF JOB STRESS AND BURNOUT AMONG NIGERIAN PRISON OFFICERS AT UYO PRISON AND STATE PRISONS HEADQUARTERS, AKWA IBOM STATE