ABSTRACT
This dissertation research applied the Person-Centered Expressive Arts (PCEA) process developed by Natalie Rogers, Ph.D. (N. Rogers, 1993, 2011) to an online therapeutic setting for helping professionals who self-reported an increase in professional stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research explored the mental health needs of helping professionals, their resilience, PCEA as a therapeutic modality, and the facilitation of PCEA in an online environment. There was one primary research question and three sub-questions. The primary research question was, "What are the lived experiences of helping professionals who have self-reported an increase in professional stress during the COVID-19 pandemic when engaged in the PCEA process?" Sub-questions related to perceptions of professional stress, any impacts of PCEA on resilience, and perceptions of the online therapeutic environment. This mixed-methods research used case study and quantitative pre- and post-study measures to explore participants' professional quality of life (Pool, Stamm, 2009) and resilience (5x5RS, DeSimone et al., 2017b). PCEA sessions included meditation, sounding, drawing, painting, clay, collage, movement, writing, and verbal processing. Six helping professionals were identified through an email networking recruitment strategy. Participation included two semi-structured interviews (pre- and post-study), three sessions of online PCEA processes, completion of the pre- and post-study measures, and an optional debriefing meeting for participants to confirm the interpretation of data. All interviews and PCEA sessions were held separately with each participant through Zoom videoconferencing. This research included no group meetings. Thematic analysis and cross-case synthesis were used to analyze the research data. Cross-case findings were that participants: (1) experienced personal growth and a deeper connection with the self, (2) felt more deeply connected with others, (3) found that the person-centered approach was beneficial and led to a sense of safety and relational creativity, (4) experienced a deeper connection with everyday creativity, and (5) experienced a connection with spirituality through engagement in the PCEA process (n = 4). This research explored professional stress, resilience, and everyday creativity among helping professionals during three sessions of online PCEA processes. It suggests that PCEA is a valuable therapeutic modality to address the stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic and serves as an uplifting, engaging, and empowering practice that can be used to benefit individuals, groups, and communities. Keywords: case study, COVID-19 pandemic, cross-case synthesis, everyday creativity, helping professionals, mixed-methods, online therapeutic services, Person-Centered Expressive Arts, resilience, spirituality, stress, thematic analysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to explore the works and existing scientific information in the databases on work stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The specific objectives were: to determine the approaches addressed by research on work stress and to analyze the main results achieved. The study was of a documentary type, with a bibliographic design, framed in a systematic review. The articles indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases were reviewed, considering the keywords and search limits: work stress, pandemic and COVID-19, published between 2020 and 2022;obtaining 161 articles. The inclusion criteria were applied: original articles, dealing with the subject, in English and with open access;leaving a sample of 22 publications, presented according to a PRISMA diagram. The main approaches addressed were: work stress, working life and remote work;work stress in health workers;work stress in agricultural workers;job stress in restaurant workers;work stress in teaching workers;work stress in prison workers and work stress, depression and anxiety. The results reveal that the workers who experienced the greatest work stress were those in the health sector, considering the latent risk of contagion for being the front-line personnel in care. Consequently, it was determined that the impact of resilience and social support can help minimize this condition.
ABSTRACT
The aim of the study is to determine approaches to investigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic stress on the professional preparedness of a physician. Materials and research methods. Working hypothesis of the research is based on K. Maslach's model of three-dimensional structure of professional burnout. The physicians of Volgograd medical organizations took part in the study — N=112, mean age — (40,2±1,4) years, mean length of service — (6,2±1,7) years. As psychodiagnostic testing methods "Diagnosis of psychological rigidity" and "Determination of neuropsychological resistance and risk of maladaptation to stress" ("Prognoz") were used. The express interview, in which physicians of Volgograd city and Volgograd region, whose professional activity is connected with rendering of medical aid to patients with COVID-19 took part, was conducted on the basis of Google electronic platform using Google Forms (N=236). An additional questionnaire was developed for the model group of doctors, the purpose of which was to subjectively assess the respondents' opinion on the necessity of determining the preparedness of physicians for professional activity in extreme conditions. Research results and their analysis. The results of the research showed the relevance of socio-psychological support of physicians working under extreme conditions in order to improve the quality of medical care. © Burnasyan FMBC FMBA.
ABSTRACT
This article aims to analyze whether an organization's level of spirituality can mitigate professional stress. An online questionnaire was developed based on the following measures: A job stress scale and an organization's spirituality inventory, both were consolidated assessment applied in previous studies. This questionnaire was applied through a digital survey, strongly shared in social media and other channels, which obtained a total of 996 respondents from all over the country and with diverse demographic and professional characteristics. The data were standardized, coded and run on Stata IC v.15. in the multiple linear regression method. This study sought to enrich the knowledge on spirituality as a strategy for organizations, especially in crises situations, as Covid-19 pandemic. The results showed that the level of spirituality enhances the chance for organizations to take actions to deal with crises and reduces the professional stress in the context of uncertainties, as it is a benefit for mental health and well-being. This article could make important contributions presenting a quantitative analysis for a not usual subject in organization strategy: spirituality. It can bring new insights in people management studies, concluding that a company with greater spirituality is more likely to attract and retain people with the best talent.
ABSTRACT
In India, the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant shortage of medicines and increased morbidity. COVID-19 has also had a profound influence on the psychological well-being of health professionals, who are surrounded by agony, death, and isolation as a result of the epidemic. The goal of this cross-sectional study is to look into the mental health of Indian healthcare workers during the second wave of the COVID-19 outbreak. From March 2021 to May 2021, a self-administered questionnaire based on the COVID-19 Stress Scale was delivered online to healthcare professionals (N = 836) in north India. An ensemble learning technique - Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) was applied to predict individual stress levels with 10-fold cross-validation. XGBoost had predicted stress with an average accuracy of 0.8889. According to the findings of this study, around 52.6 percent of healthcare professionals in the sample meet the threshold for severe psychiatric morbidity. In addition, advanced methodologies (SHAP values) were employed to determine which features had a significant impact on stress prediction. Medicine shortages and trouble concentrating were found to be the two most significant CSS predictors. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This study aimed validate the Italian version of the Professional Stress Scale (PSS). A questionnaire was translated into Italian and administered to two sample groups. The first group (n = 200) was the control group and the second (n = 1137) the experimental group. The participants in the study were students enrolled in a special needs training teacher course or a specialization course that aims to train support teachers. The study conducted two analyses; factor and reliability analyses. The factor analysis utilized the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test which had a result of 0.925 for the scale; this was above the acceptable value of 0.7. The research studied 33 items and the BTS was significant for the 33 items scale (χ2 (528) = 4353.508, p < 0.001). Moreover, five eigenvalues greater than 1 were identified in the data, whereas the total variance explained was 63.7%. The reliability test utilized the Cronbach's Alpha score (0.936) of the scale and the value is calculated based on the response of 1106 individuals. The value is well above the value of 0.80, which indicates a high internal consistency level of the different items of the scale. This study showed that the Italian version of the PSS is a reliable and valid measure that can be used for research and clinical purposes.