Air medical program merger and stress.
BACKGROUND
How does the stress of a program merger affect job stress in air medical transport?


METHODS
This study was an anonymous survey of 104 transport personnel in a Mid-western critical care transport program with merged air and ground components. Tools included the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), which quantitates stressful life events on a weighted scale that allows summation as a score, and the Medical Personnel Stress Survey (MPSS), which quantitates work stress in four categories: organizational stress (OS) related to work environment, frustration/exhaustion (FE) related to patient care, job satisfaction (JS) related to decreased self-worth, and psychosomatic complaints (PC), stress manifested as personal illness. Statistical analysis was performed with a variety of tools.


RESULTS
Fifty of 104 personnel responded completely. The average SRRS was low at 130.9; only 20% had scores above 200. No significant differences in MPSS occurred in personnel with high and low SRRS scores. Additionally, the SRRS correlated weakly with OS (r = -0.297, P < 0.05). Within the MPSS, OS correlated with FE and JS (r = 0.493, P = 0.0005; r = -0.593, P < 0.0001) and FE correlated with JS (r = -0.36, P = 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
The overall personnel stress levels in this air medical program with merged air and ground components were low and appeared to be unrelated to organizational stress. This finding may be a result in part of the careful attention paid to stress and the elimination of stressors during the merger process.
Herron
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Columbus MedFlight, Columbus, OH, USA.
Dean
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B
Crane
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Falcone
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D017732:Air Ambulances / Q000458:organization & administration*; D002055:Burnout, Professional; D003625:Data Collection; D004634:Emergency Medical Technicians / Q000523:psychology*; D006273:Health Facility Merger; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D015146:Midwestern United States; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011590:Psychology, Industrial; D014187:Transportation of Patients; D000078329:Workforce