Since the police's job stress is intensified by organizational and cultural factors other than workload and working environment, it is important to secure a sense of psychological safety within the organization and to create a mutually respectful comm...
Since the police's job stress is intensified by organizational and cultural factors other than workload and working environment, it is important to secure a sense of psychological safety within the organization and to create a mutually respectful communication culture. These changes do not stop at simply weakening the immune system, but lead to a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease with increased blood pressure and impaired vascular endothelial function (Foster et al., 2017). Job stress inhibits vagus nerve activity and maintains sympathetic nerve superiority, resulting in an imbalance of intestinal microorganisms, increased intestinal mucosa permeability, and increased secretion of inflammatory cytokines (Foster et al., 2017; Ghosh et al., 2020).
As a result, groups engaged in high-risk jobs are likely to suffer negative health consequences such as reduced infection resistance and increased inflammatory diseases.
The police's job stress is lowered not only by workload and working environment, but also by organizational and cultural factors (authoritative instructions, unfair personnel, and imbalance in top and bottom relationships). Therefore, it is important to ensure a sense of psychological safety within the organization and to create a culture of mutually respectful communication.
In order to verify the mediating effect of autonomic nervous system balance and immune health in the effect of police job stress on job satisfaction, this study was verified with 381 incumbent police officers dispatched from each local office nationwide.
The main findings of this study are as follows.
First, environmental factors, organizational culture, and job demand, which are sub-variables of job stress, were found to have a significant effect on job satisfaction.
Second, environmental factors, organizational culture, and job demand, which are sub-variables of job stress, were found to have a significant effect on the balance of self-reliance boundary.
Third, environmental factors, organizational culture, and job demand, which are sub-variables of job stress, were found to have a significant effect on immune health.
Fourth, The autonomic nervous system balance was found to have a statistically significant effect on job satisfaction.
Fifth, immune health was found to have a statistically significant effect on job satisfaction.
Sixth, the autonomic nervous system balance between job stress and job satisfaction was found to have a mediating effect.
Seventh, immune health between job stress and job satisfaction was found to have a mediating effect.
In summary, police job stress causes autonomic nervous system imbalance, which has a cascading negative effect on the immune system.
Since continuous tension and increased sympathetic nerves are inevitable due to the nature of the police's job, it is necessary to introduce a natural healing-based program to improve physiological and psychological resilience.
A natural healing-based approach can be an independent health care strategy to normalize these physiological pathways and restore immune homeostasis, and forest healing, meditation, exercise therapy, dietary improvement, and HRV feedback training have shown positive effects on restoring autonomic balance and improving immune health.
In conclusion, this study demonstrated an empirical link between police job stress and autonomic nervous system imbalance, and will be a key basis for enhancing the resilience of police organizations and the sustainability of public safety beyond job stress relief.