Trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder and the effect of explanatory variables in paramedic trainees

BMC Emergency Medicine

Research Article

Robin Heneke¹  Celine B Fjeldheim²  Marina Basson²  Karen J Cloete²  Soraya Seedat²  Keith Ganasen²  Jani Nöthling²  Karin Pretorius³ 

[1] Department of Emergency Medical Sciences, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa;Department of Psychiatry, University of Stellenbosch, Tygerberg, South Africa;Department of Psychiatry, University of Stellenbosch, Tygerberg, South Africa;The Medical Research Council, University of South Africa Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit, Parow, South Africa;

关键词: Trauma;    Posttraumatic stress disorder;    Paramedic trainees;    Emergency medical workers;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-227X-14-11

 received in 2013-02-08, accepted in 2014-04-15,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEmergency healthcare workers, including trainees and individuals in related occupations are at heightened risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression owing to work-related stressors.We aimed to investigate the type, frequency, and severity of direct trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress symptoms and other psychopathology amongst paramedic trainees. In order to create a risk profile for individuals who are at higher occupational risk of developing PTSD, we examined risk and resilience factors that possibly contributed to the presence and severity of posttraumatic symptomatology.MethodsParamedic trainees (n = 131) were recruited from a local university. A logistic regression analysis was conducted using the explanatory variables age, gender, population group, trauma exposure, depression, alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, resilience and social support.Results94% of paramedic trainees had directly experienced trauma, with 16% meeting PTSD criteria. A high rate of depression (28%), alcohol abuse (23%) and chronic perceived stress (7%) and low levels of social support was found. The number of previous trauma exposures, depression, resilience and social support significantly predicted PTSD status and depression had a mediating effect.ConclusionThere is a need for efficient, ongoing screening of depressive and PTSD symptomatology in trauma exposed high risk groups so that early psychological supportive interventions can be offered.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Fjeldheim et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.