Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Work-Related Stress among Rescue Workers in Traumatic Mass-Casualty Disasters

Yu-Long Chen, Wen-Chii Tzeng, En Chao and Hui-Hsun Chiang
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Yu-Long Chen: Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City 231, Taiwan
Wen-Chii Tzeng: School of Nursing, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan
En Chao: Department of Medical Affairs, SongShan branch, Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei 105, Taiwan
Hui-Hsun Chiang: School of Nursing, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 16, 1-11

Abstract: Rescue workers are a population at high-risk for mental problems as they are exposed to work-related stress from confrontation with traumatic events when responding to a disaster. A reliable measure is needed to assess rescue workers’ work-related stress from their surveillance of a disaster scene to help prevent severe PTSD and depressive symptoms. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Work-Related Stress Scale (WRSS) designed to measure stress in rescue workers after responding to traumatic mass-casualty events. An exploratory sequential mixed methods procedure was employed. The qualitative phase of the item generation component involved in-depth interviews of 7 experienced rescue workers from multiple specialties who had taken part in 1 or 2 mass-casualty events: the 2018 Hualien earthquake or the 2016 Tainan earthquake. In the quantitative phase, a modified Delphi approach was used to achieve consensus ratings by the same 7 raters on the items and to assess content validity. Construct validity was determined by confirmatory factor analysis using a broader sample of 293 rescue workers who had taken part in 1 of 2 mass-casualty events: the 2018 Hualien earthquake or the 2021 Hualien train derailment. The final WRSS consists of 16 items total and 4 subscales: Physical Demands, Psychological Response, Environmental Interruption, and Leadership, with aggregated alphas of 0.74–0.88. The WRSS was found to have psychometric integrity as a measure of stress in rescue workers after responding to a disaster.

Keywords: work-related stress; disaster rescue workers; traumatic events; mass-casualty incidents; disaster management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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