Canadian Public Safety Personnel and Occupational Stressors: How PSP Interpret Stressors on Duty.

Rosemary Ricciardelli,James Shewmake,Stephen Czarnuch,James Gacek,R Nicholas Carleton

doi:10.3390/ijerph17134736

Abstract

Canadian public safety personnel (e.g., correctional workers, firefighters) experience potential stressors as a function of their occupation. Occupational stressors can include organizational (e.g., job context) and operational (e.g., job content) elements. Operational stressors (e.g., exposures to potentially psychologically traumatic events) may be inevitable, but opportunities may exist to mitigate other occupational stressors for public safety personnel. Research exploring the diverse forms of stress among public safety personnel remains sparse. In our current qualitative study we provide insights into how public safety personnel interpret occupational stressors. We use a semi-grounded thematic approach to analyze what public safety personnel reported when asked to further comment on occupational stress or their work experiences in two open-ended comment fields of an online survey. We provide a more comprehensive understanding of how public safety personnel experience occupational stress and the stressors that are unique to their occupations. Beyond known operational stressors, our respondents (n = 1238; n = 828) reported substantial difficulties with organizational (interpersonal work relationship dynamics; workload distribution, resources, and administrative obligations) and operational (vigilance, work location, interacting with the public) stressors. Some operational stressors are inevitable, but other occupational stressors can be mitigated to better support our public safety personnel.

Highlights

Relative to the general population, public safety personnel (PSP) [e.g., border services officers, public safety communications officials, correctional workers, firefighters, Indigenous emergency managers, operational intelligence personnel, paramedics, police] [1,2] appear at increased risk for compromised physical [3], psychological [4], and emotional [5] well-being.The increased risk PSP experience is due, at least in part, to potentially psychologically traumatic event (PPTE) [2] exposures [6,7]
An additional 1,238 PSP (21% of total survey respondents) provided a response to the second open-ended question, “Do you have any other comments or concerns regarding work-related stressors?” Table 1; Table 2 show a breakdown of our study respondents by PSP occupation, including socio-demographic details
The open-ended responses provided by our PSP participants clarify individual experiences of organizational and operational stressors, and highlight potentially unknown occupational stressors that are shared across all PSP

Summary

Introduction

Relative to the general population, public safety personnel (PSP) [e.g., border services officers, public safety communications officials, correctional workers, firefighters (career and volunteer), Indigenous emergency managers, operational intelligence personnel, paramedics, police] [1,2] appear at increased risk for compromised physical [3], psychological [4], and emotional [5] well-being. The increased risk PSP experience is due, at least in part, to potentially psychologically traumatic event (PPTE) [2] exposures [6,7]. PPTEs refer to actual or threatened incidents of compromised physical, sexual, and mental well-being (e.g., acts of violence, fires, accidents resulting in fatalities, and explosions) [1,6,8,9]. Carleton et al [4,11] highlighted that PSP report symptoms consistent with various mental health. Public Health 2020, 17, 4736; doi:10.3390/ijerph17134736 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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Results

Conclusion