Background: Stress in the workplace is a major problem affecting the efficiency of work and quality of work life. Stress may also lead to other health problems both physical and mental such as migraines, depression, and excessive daytime sleepiness.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of high to severe stress among the employees of the Faculty of Medicine, Srinakharinwirot University, and to explore factors associated with the stress.

Materials and methods: 1,133 personnel of the Faculty of Medicine, Srinakharinwirot University were selected and response rate was 65%.  The study design was cross-sectional and data were collected from May to July, 2009. Logistic regression was employed for multivariate analysis. A two-tailed p-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: The highest prevalence of high to severe stress of 67% was found among the laborers while the lowest prevalence of 51.2% was found among the medical doctors. These laborers had odds ratio of high to severe stress 5.6 times (95% CI=1.9-16.6) higher than the doctors. Personnel in the 20-29 years age group had 1.6 times more high to severe stress than the 30-39 years age group. Personnel who suffered from depression and excessive daytime sleepiness had higher level of high to severe stress than personnel who did not. Nurses agreed that inadequate welfare increased stress levels.

Conclusion: Laborers had the highest level of stress and age group of 20-29 years had higher stress than other age groups.  Major depression and daytime sleepiness were associated with stress levels.