Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

A majority of Canadians are reporting that increasing workplace stress is affecting their health, leading to high blood pressure and even heart attacks. In British Columbia alone, the number of compensation claims for workstress has increased more than 35 times from 1987 to 2006. This has resulted in almost 500,000 days of work lost and costing just over $87 million in compensation. Heart disease claims have followed a similar pattern, resulting in 40,000 lost work days and costing $50 million in compensation. When considering the additional costs on the health care system, the effects of workstress are enormous. Although stress has been identified as a potential risk factor for heart disease, there is little known about the mechanisms which cause it. By understanding the biological pathways, it will help in developing effective ways of combating stress in the workplace. Our study will be focused on paramedics because it is considered to be one of the most stressful professions due to the difficult work schedule and frequent exposure to human tragedy. We will be gathering data about their work activity; surveying them about their perceived stress; and measuring their biological responses to stress and subclinical indicators of heart disease. Our research will use the newest innovations in measuring biological responses. This will give us an advantage over previous studies by allowing us to study more of the processes which may cause heart disease and how they interact. The finding that workstress is a heart disease risk factor has considerable public health significance because it has the potential to impact the 17 million people currently working in Canada. The effects of workstress are magnified when people bring the stress back into their homes, affecting their family life. By finding out how stress causes heart disease, we may be able to develop better ways of reducing the effects and improve the quality of life for many.