Stressed At Work? Try This Occupation On For Size

Have you wondered what the most stressful occupation in the world is? What would that job be? Contrary to what you might think, it's not being a mother or trying to handle a house full of teenagers. It's not being a high-powered attorney or a businessman. It's not the job of a soldier or the long ours of being a heart surgeon. It is not any of these occupations that is the “most stressful”. According to recent reports the most stressful job in the world is that of air traffic controllers. These are the people who use radar to guide airplanes in and out of airports and who are responsible to prevent collisions in the sky.

According to Dr. Richard Grayson, president of the American Academy of Air Traffic Control Medicine, there are an estimated 2500 to 7500 near misses in the skies over America each year. These air traffic controllers live under constant pressure that they will make a mistake, and this mistake could result in the cause of hundreds of deaths. According to Dr. Grayson, “a narrowly averted midair collision caused by one of these conscientious, intelligent, punctilious young men and women has the same effect on them as if they themselves had just escaped death by a split second.” Imagine that you were crossing the street and came inches from being ran over by a car. That shock to the system is what they experience non-stop throughout a day's work.

Shortly after a near miss, one of the controllers described his feelings like this: “I felt like I had just been in a bad automobile accident and had come out of it unscathed. I was nauseated, I felt week, and my heart was racing so fast that my hands were sweating.” Such pressure has given the controllers the highest ulcer rate of any vocation. One third of these people have peptic ulcers (compared to a rate of one in ten for doctors and lawyers), and in the opinion of Dr. Grayson another third are on their way to developing them.

It is not difficult to understand why air traffic controllers feel the pressure of their job so keenly. Theirs is work which carries weighty responsibilities, demands constant vigilance, and involves the frustration of working with radar and communication equipment which they consider outdated. Little wonder that these people are anxious, irritable at home, and sometimes unable to sleep well or eat.


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