Abstract
Emergency medicine specialists’ mental and physical health may be threatened if they experience burnout, sleep disorders, and secondary traumatic stress (STS). We aimed to investigate whether Emergency Medical Services (EMs) professionals’ mental and physical health status, depression, and anxiety are associated with burnout, STS, and sleep disorders. We hypothesized that burnout, STS, and the severity of sleep disorders would raise the risk of impaired mental, and physical health, depression, and anxiety in emergency medical clinicians. A cross-sectional multicentric study was conducted. In total,178 EMs specialists completed validated surveys to assess mental health complaints (Mental Health Inventory, MHI-5 screening test), physical health complaints (Ware scale), depression, and anxiety (Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-DASS), burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory-general survey, MBI-GS), sleep disorders (Insomnia Severity Index, ISI), and STS (STS scale). This study aimed to analyze the influence that work-related factors can have on EMs specialists’ mental and physical health, depression, and anxiety. Specifically, mental health was predicted by exhaustion (β = 0.16), cynicism (β = 0.21), insomnia severity (β = 0.13), and STS (β = 0.35); physical health was predicted by exhaustion (β = 0.33) and insomnia severity (β = 0.18); depression was predicted by cynicism (β = 0.21) and STS (β = 0.46); and anxiety was predicted by STS (β = 0.63) and inefficacy (β = 0.20). Work-related stress symptoms such as burnout, STS, and sleep disorders were found to predict emergency medicine clinicians’ mental and physical health, as well to increase the risk of depression and anxiety. It is of most importance to develop practices to prevent such symptoms and to promote mental health and well-being among the emergency medicine personnel.
Highlights
Emergency Medical Services (EMs) are characterized by a high level of work-related stress due to both emotional and physical pressure
The correlation analysis revealed that the mental health complaints score had significant associations with exhaustion (r(178) = 0.71, p < 0.01), cynicism (r(178) = 0.66, p < 0.01), inefficacy (r(178) = 0.67, p < 0.01), insomnia severity (r(178) = 0.63, p < 0.01), and STS (r(178) = 0.74, p < 0.01)
Our results identified a set of work-related stress symptoms that have a significant association with and influence on emergency medicine specialists’ mental and physical health as well as experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety
Summary
Emergency Medical Services (EMs) are characterized by a high level of work-related stress due to both emotional and physical pressure. The burnout syndrome is defined as a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, which involves three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decrease in individual accomplishment [1]. Research in this field shows that increased levels of burnout are associated with greater mood disturbance, as well as poorer general health [2]. EMs professionals are indirectly exposed to trauma through their work and may suffer from symptoms of compassion fatigue, isolation, dissociation, anxiety, known as secondary traumatic stress (STS) or vicarious traumatization [3]. Research shows that providing psychosocial services to traumatized populations relative to symptoms of trauma, disrupted cognitive schema, and general psychological distress, such as anxiety and depression has an effect [5]
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