Anaesthesia Department, National Women's Health, Auckland City Hospital, Level 9, 2 Park Road, Grafton, Auckland, 1023, New Zealand.
Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Children's Health Ireland at Crumlin, Dublin, Ireland.
Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2021 Oct;94(7):1721-1737. doi: 10.1007/s00420-021-01670-6. Epub 2021 Feb 25.
The coronavirus 2019 pandemic has placed all intensive care unit (ICU) staff at increased risk of psychological distress. To date, measurement of this distress has largely been by means of validated assessment tools. We believe that qualitative data may provide a richer view of staff experiences during this pandemic.
We conducted a cross-sectional, observational study using online and written questionnaires to all ICU staff which consisted of validated tools to measure psychological distress (quantitative findings) and open-ended questions with free-text boxes (qualitative findings). Here, we report our qualitative findings. We asked four questions to explore causes of stress, need for supports and barriers to accessing supports. A conventional content analysis was undertaken.
In total, 269 of the 408 respondents (65.9%) gave at least one response to a free-text question. Seven overarching themes were found, which contribute to our proposed model for occupational stress amongst critical care staff. The work environment played an important role in influencing the perceived psychological impact on healthcare workers. Extra-organisational factors, which we termed the "home-work interface" and uncertainty about the future, manifested as anticipatory anxiety, had a proportionally larger influence on worker well-being than would be expected in non-pandemic conditions.
Our findings have important implications for appropriate allocation of resources and ensuring well-being of the ICU multidisciplinary team for this and future pandemics.
2019 年冠状病毒大流行使所有重症监护病房（ICU）工作人员面临更大的心理困扰风险。迄今为止，这种困扰的衡量主要是通过经过验证的评估工具。我们认为，定性数据可能会更全面地了解工作人员在大流行期间的经历。
我们使用在线和书面问卷对所有 ICU 工作人员进行了横断面观察性研究，问卷包括测量心理困扰的经过验证的工具（定量发现）和带有自由文本框的开放式问题（定性发现）。在这里，我们报告定性发现。我们提出了四个问题，以探讨压力的原因、支持的需求以及获得支持的障碍。采用常规内容分析。
在总共 408 名受访者中，有 269 名（65.9％）至少对一个自由文本问题作出了回应。发现了七个总体主题，这些主题为我们提出的重症监护工作人员职业压力模型提供了依据。工作环境对影响医护人员心理影响方面起着重要作用。我们称之为“家庭-工作界面”的组织外因素以及对未来的不确定性，表现为预期焦虑，对工人的幸福感的影响比例高于非大流行情况下的预期。
我们的研究结果对适当分配资源以及确保 ICU 多学科团队在此次和未来大流行中的幸福感具有重要意义。
