CN10 - Stress of conscience in healthcare personnel caring for patients at the end of life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare personnel across settings often worked long hours and frequently reported lack of support, feelings of vulnerability and loss of control. These constraints together with continuously changing restrictions related to efforts to control the spread of COVID-19, affected the ability to provide high quality palliative care. The aim was to examine associations between stress of conscience, psychosocial work environment, occupational self-efficacy, and symptoms of insomnia in healthcare personnel caring for patients at the end-of-life during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden and Norway.

Methods

This study is part of the Palliative Quality Care COVID-19 project (PaQC-C19) that examined psychosocial work environment, the health of healthcare personnel and palliative care quality across three care contexts (specialized palliative care units, hospitals and nursing homes) during the second year of the pandemic among healthcare personnel caring for patients at the end of life (n=808). In this part of the PaQC-C19 project a step-wise multiple regression analysis was used.

Results

The final model explained 52% of the variance of stress of conscience. Elevated work pace, elevated emotional demands, lower influence, elevated meaning of work, elevated role conflicts, elevated burnout, elevated stress, lower occupational self-efficacy, and elevated insomnia symptoms, were associated with elevated stress of conscience. In addition, working as a registered nurse was associated with elevated stress of conscience.

Conclusions

The study indicate that psychosocial work environment, occupational self-efficacy, and sleep can be regarded as risk and health factors during a pandemic in relation to stress of conscience in healthcare personnel caring for patients at the end-of-life. Hence, we stress the importance of ensuring a healthy psychosocial work environment during pandemics in order to prevent burnout in health care personnel and achieve high-quality palliative care for patients and their families.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

AFA Försäkring.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.