Prevalence and related factors of post-traumatic stress disorder among medical staff members exposed to H7N9 patients

Tang, Liling; Pan, Lingling; Yuan, Liping; Zha, Lei

China had experienced two waves of the H7N9 epidemic since March 2013. The increasing number of new H7N9 cases and the high mortality rate among H7N9 patients have attracted public attention, and other countries are becoming concerned about the further spread of the virus outside of China. The hospital environment has a high risk of spreading infectious diseases, particularly the pandemic influenza H7N9. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to report the stress symptoms among doctors and nurses during the H7N9 influenza epidemic. Most of these practitioners experienced various stress reactions, and 20.59% eventually developed PTSD. Those doctors and nurses who were exposed to H7N9 patients were prone to developing severe anxiety and stress symptoms. Therefore, examining the PTSD symptoms of these medical workers must be prioritized. Exposure to traumatic events is the immediate cause of PTSD and is essential in diagnosing such disorder. Poton [16] found that medical workers usually manifest the symptoms of their patients after experiencing a traumatic event, but such symptoms were always ignored. Alexander [17] suggested that those people who were repeatedly exposed to traumatic events were prone to suffering all kinds of psychological problems.