Stress resulting from change and restructuring: A cognitive approach

Restructuring of the health care system has brought about stress in health care workers who are attempting to adapt to change. Although most stress-reduction approaches utilize affective solutions, this article argues that instituting a new way of thinking is needed for health care workers to survive and thrive under restructuring. There are a number of fallacies of thinking that individuals use in the face of change, including dichotomous thinking and weak-sense critical thinking. Adaptation and survival in today's health care environment requires complex ways of thinking that go beyond an innate resistance to change, shown in this article as dialectical thinking.