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Romania's pilot project for the assessment of physical exhaustion and professional stress among the medical staff of the Timisoara-based Infectious Diseases and Pneumophtisiology Hospital 'Dr. Victor Babes' found that 56.37 percent of the doctors, nurses, nurse assistants, stretcher-bearers and other surveyed staff suffer from medium to high levels of burnout (physical exhaustion and stress), hospital manager Dr. Cristian Oancea announced on Monday.
Also, 55.88 percent of the participants in the survey suffer from emotional exhaustion, 67.16 percent of the hospital staff reported experiencing a high degree of stress, and 64.22 percent feel concern, fatigue and lack of rest and never have time for themselves.
A serious alarm signal is represented by the rise in anxiety which, the survey found, affects 34.80 of the medical unit's staff.
"The survey revealed what I, regrettably, already suspected when, together with my colleagues, I made the decision to conduct this project which is unprecedented in Romania. A high degree of professional but also personal exhaustion. Which leaves deep traces. We haven't been able to take too many days off in the last year, because each of us was needed at the job. How could we have left when the wards were full, when people were suffering? Every phase of the pandemic left its scars on us. Not to speak about the high degree of impairment of the quality of life, and this goes not just for the hospital, but can be felt by each of us. The survey will be sent to the Health Ministry and I am convinced that it can be applied to any other COVID health facility. In fact, several colleagues across the country asked us for help and we will provide them with the study and the questionnaires, so that they can also perform an analysis of the state of exhaustion of their personnel," explained Cristian Oancea in a release for AGERPRES.
In the second stage of the project, the participants in the survey had either personal or group meetings with the psychologist of the health facility, with the interviews revealing that 9.31 percent of the respondents also have a certain degree of depression.
The third stage was aimed at finding solutions to improve the quality of life and the mental and emotional state of the 'Victor Babes' Hospital workers.
"The residents and students who have joined us in recent months have been of great help and I thank them. They worked in the intensive care unit and the triage area. We also have colleagues seconded from other health units who wanted to help us. However, there is a shortage of staff that we will try to cover in the next period," added pulmonologist Cristian Oancea.
The survey was conducted between February and March on a sample of approximately 250 employees, significant for the hospital's COVID front-line health workers.
