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Author Notes:

Jennifer S. Mascaro, jmascar@emory.edu

We are immeasurably grateful to the SHCs whose data were included in this study and whose work throughout the pandemic should be characterized as nothing short of heroic. We are also grateful to research assistants who helped collect these data.

Conceptualization, P.K.P., J.S.M. and C.L.R.; methodology, P.K.P. and J.S.M.; formal analysis, P.K.P. and J.S.M.; investigation, P.K.P. and J.S.M.; resources, M.A.M. and G.H.G.; data curation, P.K.P., M.A.M. and J.S.M.; writing—original draft preparation, P.K.P., Z.S. and J.S.M.; writing—review and editing, all authors.; visualization, P.K.P. and J.S.M.; supervision, C.L.R., G.H.G. and J.S.M.; project administration, P.K.P. and J.S.M.; funding acquisition, J.S.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Subjects:

Research Funding:

This research received no external funding. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the National Institutes of Health under grant 5K01AT010488 (Mascaro). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Keywords:

  • chaplain
  • burnout
  • spiritual health
  • COVID-19
  • well-being
  • depression

Hospital Chaplain Burnout, Depression, and Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Tools:

Journal Title:

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Volume:

Volume 21, Number 7

Publisher:

, Pages 944-None

Type of Work:

Article | Final Publisher PDF

Abstract:

Healthcare personnel experienced unprecedented stressors and risk factors for burnout, anxiety, and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic. This may have been particularly true for spiritual health clinicians (SHCs), also referred to as healthcare chaplains. We administered a daily pulse survey that allowed SHCs to self-report burnout, depression, and well-being, administered every weekday for the first year of the pandemic. We used a series of linear regression models to evaluate whether burnout, depression, and well-being were associated with local COVID-19 rates in the chaplains’ hospital system (COVID-19 admissions, hospital deaths from COVID-19, and COVID-19 ICU census). We also compared SHC weekly rates with national averages acquired by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) data during the same timeframe. Of the 840 daily entries from 32 SHCs, 90.0% indicated no symptoms of burnout and 97.1% were below the cutoff for depression. There was no statistically significant relationship between any of the COVID-19 predictors and burnout, depression, or well-being. Mean national PHQ-2 scores were consistently higher than our sample’s biweekly means. Understanding why SHCs were largely protected against burnout and depression may help in addressing the epidemic of burnout among healthcare providers and for preparedness for future healthcare crises.

Copyright information:

© 2024 by the authors.

This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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