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Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey
BACKGROUND: The mental health effects of healthcare work during the COVID-19 pandemic have been substantial, but it is not known how long they will persist. This study aimed to determine if hospital workers’ burnout and psychological distress increased monotonically over 1 year, during which waves o...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9132565/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35614505 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12995-022-00352-4 |
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author | Maunder, Robert G. Heeney, Natalie D. Hunter, Jonathan J. Strudwick, Gillian Jeffs, Lianne P. Ginty, Leanne Johnstone, Jennie Kiss, Alex Loftus, Carla A. Wiesenfeld, Lesley A. |
author_facet | Maunder, Robert G. Heeney, Natalie D. Hunter, Jonathan J. Strudwick, Gillian Jeffs, Lianne P. Ginty, Leanne Johnstone, Jennie Kiss, Alex Loftus, Carla A. Wiesenfeld, Lesley A. |
author_sort | Maunder, Robert G. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The mental health effects of healthcare work during the COVID-19 pandemic have been substantial, but it is not known how long they will persist. This study aimed to determine if hospital workers’ burnout and psychological distress increased monotonically over 1 year, during which waves of case numbers and hospitalizations waxed and waned, or followed some other pattern. METHODS: A prospective longitudinal survey was conducted at four time-points over 1 year in a cohort of 538 hospital workers and learners, which included validated measures of burnout (emotional exhaustion scale of Maslach Burnout Inventory) and psychological distress (K6). Repeated measures ANOVA tested changes over time and differences between subjects by occupational role, age and ethnic group. The direction and magnitude of changes over time were investigated by plotting rates of high scores (using cut-offs) at each time-point compared to case rates of COVID-19 in the city in which the study took place. RESULTS: There were significant effects of occupational role (F = 11.2, p < .001) and age (F = 12.8, p < .001) on emotional exhaustion. The rate of high burnout was highest in nurses, followed by other healthcare professionals, other clinical staff, and lowest in non-clinical staff. Peak rates of high burnout occurred at the second or third measurement point for each occupational group, with lower rates at the fourth measurement point. Similarly to the results for emotional exhaustion, rates of high psychological distress peaked at the spring 2021 measurement point for most occupational groups and were higher in nurses than in other healthcare professionals. CONCLUSIONS: Neither emotional exhaustion nor psychological distress was rising monotonically. Burnout and psychological distress were consistently related to occupational role and were highest in nurses. Although emotional exhaustion improved as the case rate of COVID-19 decreased, rates of high emotional exhaustion in nurses and other healthcare professionals remained higher than was typically measured in hospital-based healthcare workers prior to the pandemic. Ongoing monitoring of healthcare workers’ mental health is warranted. Organizational and individual interventions to support healthcare workers continue to be important. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9132565 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91325652022-05-26 Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey Maunder, Robert G. Heeney, Natalie D. Hunter, Jonathan J. Strudwick, Gillian Jeffs, Lianne P. Ginty, Leanne Johnstone, Jennie Kiss, Alex Loftus, Carla A. Wiesenfeld, Lesley A. J Occup Med Toxicol Research BACKGROUND: The mental health effects of healthcare work during the COVID-19 pandemic have been substantial, but it is not known how long they will persist. This study aimed to determine if hospital workers’ burnout and psychological distress increased monotonically over 1 year, during which waves of case numbers and hospitalizations waxed and waned, or followed some other pattern. METHODS: A prospective longitudinal survey was conducted at four time-points over 1 year in a cohort of 538 hospital workers and learners, which included validated measures of burnout (emotional exhaustion scale of Maslach Burnout Inventory) and psychological distress (K6). Repeated measures ANOVA tested changes over time and differences between subjects by occupational role, age and ethnic group. The direction and magnitude of changes over time were investigated by plotting rates of high scores (using cut-offs) at each time-point compared to case rates of COVID-19 in the city in which the study took place. RESULTS: There were significant effects of occupational role (F = 11.2, p < .001) and age (F = 12.8, p < .001) on emotional exhaustion. The rate of high burnout was highest in nurses, followed by other healthcare professionals, other clinical staff, and lowest in non-clinical staff. Peak rates of high burnout occurred at the second or third measurement point for each occupational group, with lower rates at the fourth measurement point. Similarly to the results for emotional exhaustion, rates of high psychological distress peaked at the spring 2021 measurement point for most occupational groups and were higher in nurses than in other healthcare professionals. CONCLUSIONS: Neither emotional exhaustion nor psychological distress was rising monotonically. Burnout and psychological distress were consistently related to occupational role and were highest in nurses. Although emotional exhaustion improved as the case rate of COVID-19 decreased, rates of high emotional exhaustion in nurses and other healthcare professionals remained higher than was typically measured in hospital-based healthcare workers prior to the pandemic. Ongoing monitoring of healthcare workers’ mental health is warranted. Organizational and individual interventions to support healthcare workers continue to be important. BioMed Central 2022-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9132565/ /pubmed/35614505 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12995-022-00352-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Maunder, Robert G. Heeney, Natalie D. Hunter, Jonathan J. Strudwick, Gillian Jeffs, Lianne P. Ginty, Leanne Johnstone, Jennie Kiss, Alex Loftus, Carla A. Wiesenfeld, Lesley A. Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey |
title | Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey |
title_full | Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey |
title_fullStr | Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey |
title_full_unstemmed | Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey |
title_short | Trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey |
title_sort | trends in burnout and psychological distress in hospital staff over 12 months of the covid-19 pandemic: a prospective longitudinal survey |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9132565/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35614505 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12995-022-00352-4 |
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