Physical Health Consequences of Vicarious Trauma: Prospective Relationship Between Hospital Patient Care Worker Vicarious Trauma Symptoms and Gastrointestinal Disorders.

Abstract

Vicarious trauma (VT) is "secondhand" trauma healthcare workers experience when interacting with trauma survivors. The prospective relationship between workers' VT symptoms and physical health has not been studied. Survey data from 775 hospital workers were linked to health insurance expenditures to identify stress-related conditions known as disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBIs) occurrence within 1-year follow-up. VT symptoms (modeled continuously and categorically) and conditional odds of developing DGBI were assessed with multilevel logistic regression. Conditional odds of DGBI increased 4% for every one-point increase in VT symptom score (95% confidence interval, 0.98 to 1.11; P = 0.17). Participants with high versus low VT symptoms had 3.40-times the conditional odds of DGBI (95% confidence interval, 1.44 to 8.06; P = 0.01). Workers with high versus low VT symptoms had significantly higher odds of developing DGBIs, indicating that VT may adversely impact workers' physical health.