The attentional bias of emotion in medical workers of emergency department in one hospital and it’s relationship with mood state / 中华劳动卫生职业病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To study the characteristics of attentional bias to emotional stimulus in medical workers of emergency department and explore the relationship between the emotional Stroop effect and mood states, thus providing a reference to the assessment and intervention of emergency medical workers’ mental health.@*Methods@#Two kinds of emotional Stroop tasks with words and pictures and the Profile of Mood States (POMS) were administered to thirty-six medical workers of emergency department and thirty-six medical workers of other departments.@*Results@#The reaction time to negative and positive words and pictures were all higher than the reaction time to neutral stimulus, thus showing the significant Stroop effect in medical workers. The Stroop effect to negative emotional stimulus in medical workers of emergency department was significantly smaller than that in medical workers of other departments, while the difference of Stroop effect to positive stimulus was not significant between the two groups. Correlation analyses revealed that the correlations between Stroop effect size to positive pictures and tension and angry of POMS were all negatively significant (r value was -0.314 and -0.330 respectively) , and the correlation between Stroop effect size to negative pictures and fatigue was negatively significant (r=-0.303) .@*Conclusions@#There is a significant emotional Stroop effect in medical workers. Although the ability of anti-interference to emotional stimulus in medical workers of emergency department was better than medical workers of the other departments, the long-term avoidance to negative emotional stimulus was still has a negative effect on the mood states of individuals.