Harnessing distress to boost growth in frontline healthcare workers during COVID-19 pandemic: The protective role of resilience, emotion regulation and social support

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth, while assessing the moderating role of resilience, emotion regulation and social support. The authors expected that high-level distress would be associated with posttraumatic growth in healthcare workers with high resilience, high emotion regulation skills and high social support. To test this hypothesis, between 15 and 30 May, 2020, they collected data from healthcare workers (HCWs) working in worst-hit regions of central-northern Italy using an online questionnaire spread through a snowball sampling procedure. To investigate the relationship between PTSD and PTG under the influence of resilience, emotion regulation and social support, the authors performed a series of moderation analysis with 10 000 accelerated bootstrap sampling and bias-corrected confidence intervals, controlling for gender. The moderating role of resilience was significant as indicated by the model and the PTSD by resilience interaction. The same analysis performed with emotion regulation yielded a significant model for cognitive reappraisal as confirmed by the PTSD by cognitive reappraisal interaction. Finally, the moderating role of social support was significant as indicated by the interaction with PTSD. The current findings bridge the currently dichotomous narrative on HCW psychological wellbeing by showing that pandemic-related distress and growth are connected in a complex relationship that depends on intra and inter-personal factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)