Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3182-0207 : Diane Trudgill

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9942-3203 : Elizabeth Donnelly

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2020

Publication Title

Humanities & Social Sciences Communications

Volume

7

Keywords

PTSD, emergency care, nurses, women, prevalence, rapid

Abstract

This research review synthesized the evidence on the prevalence of posttraumatic stressdisorder among emergency department personnel in Canada and the USA. No previous suchsynthesis, specific to this crucial aspect of North American health care had previously beenpublished. Broad keyword searches of interdisciplinary research databases, both peer-reviewed and grey, retrieved 10 surveys published between 1996 and 2019. Their outcomeswere synthesized with sample-weighted, pooled analyses. The most significant reviewfindingwas that one of everyfive such emergency care personnel met posttraumatic stress disorderdiagnostic criteria; 18.6% (95% confidence interval 16.9, 20.4). However, this synthesis ofgenerally small, nonprobability surveys with high nonparticipation rates, could only suggestthat the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder is perhaps nearly two-fold greater amongemergency department nurses (25.8%) than physicians (15.6%). Additionally, it seems thatgender (being a woman) may play an important role in the relatively greater risk of nurses.Better controlled, more powerful probability surveys that examine the profession by genderinteraction, are needed to affirm (or refute) these syntheticfindings. Qualitative inquiries thattap into the key informing experiences of diverse emergency department personnel are alsoneeded to best plan and implement their preventive and therapeutic care.

DOI

10.1057/s41599-020-00584-x

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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