Occupational Stress and Its Coping Strategies among School Teachers of Pokhara Metropolitan

Introduction: Stress that arises at the time of working and work related to teaching is simply called occupational stress. Teaching is considered as a most stressful occupation. This study aims to assess the level of occupational stress and its coping strategies among school teachers of Pokhara Lekthnath Metropolitan. Methods: Cross-sectional study design was used to assess stress level and its coping strategies from June to December 2019. Multi-stage random sampling technique was used including both types of Public and Private schools and only one-third wards were taken out of 33 wards. From each school, fifty percent teachers were taken randomly from the total number. ‘Teacher Occupational Stress scale’ and ‘Modified brief cope inventory’ was freely available standard tool used for this survey. Self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Crude odds ratio was calculated to assess the coping strategies with stress level. Results: In this study, majority of respondents have experienced less stress which is 90.8% followed by moderate stress 7.6% and more stress 1.6%. The most common sources of stress were inadequate resources, poor job promotion, pupil misbehaviors, inadequate salary and more numbers of students in the classroom. The frequently used coping strategies were using alcohol or other drugs (UOR:5.68, CI: 2.30-14.02), taking action to make situation better (UOR: 3.24, CI:1.48- 7.07), think hard about what steps to take (UOR: 0.16, CI: 0.06-0.44), trying to get advice/ help from others (UOR: 0.27, CI: 0.08-0.67), accepting the reality of the situation (UOR:0.39, CI: 0.16-0.95). Conclusion: This study concludes that majority of teachers felt less stress and only marital status was found to be statistically significant (p<0.034) with stress level. The most significant sources of stress among teachers were unable to concentrate, inadequate salary, respect and prestige and less leave.