Compassion satisfaction and fatigue among healthcare professionals in the emergency medical services during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Dorra Loghmari

  Emergency medical service (EMS/SAMU03) Sahloul University Hospital, Sousse,Tunisia ,

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic, has exposed healthcare professionals to higher levels of
psychological distress, especially compassion fatigue (CF) which includes syndromes (burnout (BO)
and secondary traumatic stress (STS). Our study aims to assess satisfaction (CS) among healthcare
professionals (HCP) through the Professional Quality of Life score.
Materials and Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study on 64 HCPs who had worked in the
(SAMU) in French
during the period from 1/03/2020 to 1/06/2021. We used an unsupervised and self-administrated survey
for the self-assessment of the professional quality of life using the ProQOL V.
Results: The mean score of CS, BO, and STS were 34.4 ±6.566; 28.59±6.19.7, and 31.56 ±4.357,
respectively. The majority of participants presented a medium level of STS, BO, and CS. There were
significant differences by profession for CS, with paramedics having the highest score. There was a
significant positive correlation between CS and age. CS differed based on whether they were infected or
not by COVID-19. Age, comorbidities, professional status, and individual estimation of the risk of
contracting covid-19 during work weighted BO. Only sex weighted STS. All three subscales were
significantly correlated with each other. CS was negatively correlated with the other subscales. There
were positive correlations between STS and BO. In the multiple linear regression model, only BO and
the use of safety measures had a significant association with CS. As for BO, the variables with significant
weights were comorbidities and CS. As for STS, only sex showed significant weights
Conclusion: Future lines of research and improvement strategies, emerge based on these data to
cultivate compassion, empower CPs to prevent CF, and diminish BO and STS and their effects on both
professionals and patients.

• PDF

Copyright (c) 2022 Tunisian Journal of Emergency Medicine

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

THE tjem allows authors to retain unrestricted copyright and full publishing rights of their articles.

All articles published in this journal are openly accessible and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This guarantees that anyone is free to:

• Share: Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

• Adapt: Remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

• Attribution: Users must give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the journal, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

By submitting a manuscript to tjem, authors grant the journal the right of first publication, while retaining full ownership of their intellectual property.