Are Pediatric Critical Personnel Satisfied With Their Lives? Prediction of Satisfaction With Life From Burnout, Posttraumatic Stress, and Posttraumatic Growth, and Comparison With Noncritical Pediatric Staff

Objectives: Staff in PICUs shows high burnout, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and posttraumatic growth levels. However, their levels of satisfaction with life and how positive and negative posttrauma outcomes relate to each other and contribute to predict satisfaction with life remain unknown. Thus, we attempted to explore these aspects and to compare the findings with data from pediatric professionals working in noncritical units.

Design: This is an observational multicentric, cross-sectional study.

Setting: The PICU of nine hospitals in Spain, and other pediatric units in the same hospitals.

Subjects: Two hundred ninety-eight PICU workers (57 physicians, 177 nurses, and 64 nursing assistants) and 189 professionals working in noncritical pediatric units (53 physicians, 104 nurses, and 32 nursing assistants).

Intervention: Participants completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the Trauma Screening Questionnaire, the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, and the Satisfaction With Life Scale.

Measurements And Main Results: Of PICU staff, 16.4% were very satisfied with their lives, 34.2% were satisfied, 34.6% showed average satisfaction with life, and 14.8% were below average. No differences were found between PICU and non-PICU workers. Women reported lower satisfaction with life than men, and physicians reported higher satisfaction with life than other professional groups. The correlation between posttraumatic stress disorder and posttraumatic growth was low, but significant and positive. According to the path analysis with latent variables, 20% of the variance satisfaction with life could be predicted from burnout, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and posttraumatic growth. Higher distress was inversely associated to satisfaction with life, whereas posttraumatic growth contributed to higher satisfaction with life.

Conclusions: Posttraumatic growth can moderate the negative effect of traumatic work-related experiences in satisfaction with life. PICU and non-PICU workers were equally satisfied with their lives. Positive and negative impact of work-related potentially traumatic events can coexist in the same person. Interventions aimed at reducing distress and fostering posttraumatic growth could impact in an improvement in pediatric health professionals' satisfaction with life.