Personal features and functional state of organism in railway power dispatchers

Objective. The work of railway power dispatchers requires high professionalism. Criteria of successful work are health status, level of psychoemotional tension and adaptability, situational functional status. Assessment of significance in providing professional capacity for work and determination of personal psychological characteristics is of special interest. The aim was to analyze the functional state of an organism and personal psychological parameters in railway power dispatchers so as to determine the possibility of their use as criteria for evaluating stress tolerance and capacity for work including gender features. Materials and methods. The studies on express diagnosis of functional state and individual psychological testing using the method of Cettell’s sixteen-factor personality questionnaire were implemented among 59 power dispatchers (36 men and 23 women; mean age 40.17 ± 1.37years, record of service 13.4 ± 1.3 years) Results. Express testing of functional state showed the presence of chronic fatigue, distress state and other unfavorable changes in the functional state. Statistically significant differences among the errors while implementing the task by men and women ( p < 0.05) demonstrate the deeper manifestations of professional stress in women power dispatchers. The obtained data regarding psychological characteristics of power dispatchers mainly satisfy the requirements for implementation of their duties including the tension of labor of class 3.2 regarding communicative and intellectual properties as well, but there was detected the risk for changed emotional and regulatory properties of a person connected, probably, with fatigue and overfatigue as manifestations of professional stress that can cause reduction of the capacity for work. Conclusions. There was demonstrated an adequacy of using the methods for assessment of functional state and psychological parameters of a person as additional criteria for estimation of stress tolerance and capacity for work including gender features.