Clinical staff in EDs are subject to a range of stressors. The objective of this study was to describe and compare clinical staff perceptions of their ED's working environment across two different Australian EDs.
This was a cross-sectional, descriptive, research design that included distribution of three survey tools to clinical staff in two Australian EDs in 2016. Descriptive statistics were reported to characterise workplace stressors, coping styles and the ED environment. These data were compared by hospital and the employee's clinical role (nurse or physician).
In total, 146 ED nurses and doctors completed the survey (response rate: 67%). Despite geographical variation, the staff at the two locations had similar demographic profiles in terms of age, sex and years of experience. Staff reported moderate levels of workload and self-realisation but low levels of conflict or nervousness in the workplace. Nurses and physicians reported similar perceptions of the work environment, although nurses reported slightly higher median levels of workload. Staff rated the death or sexual abuse of a child as most stressful, followed by workplace violence and heavy workload. Staff used a large range of coping strategies, and these were similar across both sites.
These findings are the first multi-site and multidisciplinary examinations of Australian ED staff perceptions, improving our understanding of staff stressors and coping strategies and highlighting similarities across different EDs. These data support the development and implementation of strategies to improve ED working environments to help ensure professional longevity of ED staff.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 13. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 November 2020.
All research outputs
#3,307,222
of 29,695,593 outputs
Outputs from Emergency Medicine Australasia
#344
of 2,151 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#63,255
of 463,716 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Emergency Medicine Australasia
#6
of 27 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 29,695,593 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 88th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,151 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 463,716 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 27 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its contemporaries.
