Self-rated health and its related influencing factors among emergency department physicians: a national cross-sectional study

Ke Peng; Jingjing Jiang; Nan Jiang; Rongrong An; Jianwei Zheng; Shijiao Yan

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2023.1147403

Self-rated health and its related influencing factors among emergency department physicians: a national cross-sectional study

Front Public Health. 2023 Jul 13:11:1147403. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1147403. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ke Peng¹, Jingjing Jiang², Nan Jiang³, Rongrong An³, Jianwei Zheng⁴, Shijiao Yan^{5

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Affiliations

¹ Department of Finance, Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
² Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
³ Department of Social Medicine and Health Management, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
⁴ Department of Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
⁵ School of Public Health, Hainan Medical University, Haikou, Hainan, China.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Emergency and Trauma of Ministry of Education, Hainan Medical University, Haikou, China.
⁷ Department of Emergency Medicine, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Emergency and Critical Care Metabolomics, Hunan Provincial Institute of Emergency Medicine, Hunan Provincial People's Hospital/The First Affiliated Hospital, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China.

Abstract

Background: Protecting and improving the personal health of healthcare workers is critical to improving the efficiency and quality of care. To effectively meet the needs of the emergency service system, emergency physicians need to be in a good state of health. However, due to the special characteristics of work in the emergency department, emergency physicians have to face various psychosocial pressures, which may bring them physical and mental distress. Therefore, this study aims to explore the emergency physicians' self-rated health status and its related factors, to provide an empirical study for the improvement of emergency physicians' self-rated health status.

Method: A cross-sectional survey of emergency physicians was conducted in China between July and August 2018. The questionnaires contained items on demographic characteristics, behavioral lifestyle and job-related factors, as well as self-rated health. The generalized ordinal logistic model was used to identify related factors of emergency physicians' self-rated health status.

Results: Only 14.4% of Chinese emergency physicians considered themselves in good health status. Results showed that emergency physicians who never exercised (β = 0.76, p < 0.001) and exercised <2 times per week (β = 0.34, p < 0.001) were more likely to report poor health status. In addition, emergency physicians with good sleep quality (β = -3.84, p < 0.001), fewer night work shifts (β = -0.47, p < 0.001), less frequency of visiting patients (β = -0.33, p < 0.001), never suffered the workplace violence (β = -0.47, p < 0.001) and never perceived effort-reward imbalance (β = -0.68, p < 0.001) were more likely to report good self-rated health.

Conclusion: Chinese emergency physicians' self-rated health status was not optimistic. Self-rated health is associated with multiple domains of work-related factors and personal lifestyle. Feasible measures should be taken to improve the working environment of emergency physicians, develop acceptable shift schedules for employees, monitor and maintain the health status of emergency department physicians.

Keywords: effort-reward imbalance; emergency department; occupational health; physicians; self-rated health.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Cross-Sectional Studies
Emergency Service, Hospital
Health Personnel
Humans
Physicians* / psychology
Stress, Psychological / psychology

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the Major Science and Technology Project of the Hainan Provincial Science and Technology Department (ZDKJ202004) and the Key Research and Development Programme of the Hainan Provincial Science and Technology Department (ZDYF2020112).