DO GENDER DIFFERENCES HAVE INFLUENCE ON PSYCHOSOCIAL STRESS, QUALITY OF LIFE AND WORK DEMANDS? CROSSSECTIONAL STUDY

TAll over the world studies have argued that general practice has become an increasingly stressful work because of increasing demands and constraints. As a consequence of the health reform in Lithuania there have been changes regarding the role and tasks of GP's. These changes have led to new job demands that may affect the quality of life for the Lithuanian general practitioners. There may also be gender differences in this respect. Cross-sectional study of 300 Lithuanian general practitioners. A visual marked scale to asses quality of life. Psychosocial stress was investigated with a questionnaire based on the Reeder scale. Job demands were investigated with the Karasek scale. There were no significant gender differences among Lithuanian GP's in quality of life (p:0.47), job demands (p:0.21) and psychosocial stress (p:0.21). Strong relationships were however discovered between quality of life and psychosocial stress (r:-0.40 and r:-0.29); psychosocial stress and job demands (r:0.44 and r:0.51);, job demands and quality of life (r:-0.61 and r:-0.19) for males and females respectively. There seems to be no significant gender difference in quality of life, job demands and psychosocial stress among Lithuanian GP's, but there are strong associations between psychosocial stress, job demands and quality of life for both genders. High job demands and high psychosocial stress for GP's predict a lower quality of life for both genders compared to those with low job demands and low psychosocial stress.

Keywords
general practitioner; gender; quality of life; job demands; psychosocial stress