Traumatic events, professional quality of life and physical symptoms among emergency nurses

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate emergency nurses' reported traumatic events, professional quality of life and physical symptoms. Methods: The design of the study was descriptive. The respondents were 157 Emergency nurses with the majority were women (94.3% female and 5.7% were men). Data were collected from September 28 to December 1, 2011. The professional quality of life (ProQOL) instrument is conceptualized with three sub-dimensions (compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress), in addition information about traumatic events, physical symptoms and demographic variables were collected. Burnout and secondary traumatic stress (STS) are two parts of compassion fatigue. Data were analyzed using the SPSS/WIN 18.0 program and included descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson's correlations. Results: Thirteen percent of the participants reported a high ProQOL. Compassion satisfaction was negatively correlated with burnout and physical symptoms, whereas, traumatic events had positive correlations with STS. Also, burnout and STS were positively correlated with physical symptoms respectively. Conclusion: Since the level of professional quality of life among emergency nurses was relatively low it is recommended that an intervention program for emergency nurses be instituted to improve compassion satisfaction and to decrease compassion fatigue and physical symptoms.