Personal resources in coping with stress among paramedics Part 1

The concept of personal resources is used in health psychology in reference to all the factors that help in coping with stress. Moos and Schafer define personal resource as: ‘relatively stable personal and social factors, which influence the way the individual tries to tackle life crises and stress transactions’. Many researchers count the following as important personal resources: social support, ways of coping with stress, self-esteem and self-efficacy, sense of coherence, level of optimism, ability to act assertively, locus of control. Paramedics can be associated with jobs requiring above-average level of both health and psychological costs. Thus, determination of the relation between the sense of coherence and ways of coping with stress will be the subject of this project.