It is difficult to pick up a journal or attend a professional meeting without encountering discussion about the well-being of health care clinicians working in stressful acute care environments. It is equally difficult to navigate the multiple concepts that have been developed and used to assess the distressing consequences of working with acute and critically ill patients. These consequences, however, are variable and dependent on the specific health care discipline. For example, the prevalence of moral distress, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious traumatization, burnout syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression is high among a variety of health care populations including nurses, physicians, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, and mental health providers.17 Critical care clinicians and critical care nurses in particular have a significantly higher prevalence of psychological distress compared with their acute care and outpatient colleagues.1’8 The evidence suggests that approximately 25% of critical care nurses experience symptoms consistent with PTSD, 21% experience anxiety, 14% experience depression, and 85% experience burnout syndrome.
展开▼
