Determinants of emotional distress in neonatal healthcare professionals: an exploratory analysis

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper “Determinants of emotional distress in neonatal healthcare professionals: an exploratory analysis”. This study is part of the Staff and Parental Adjustment to COVID-19 Epidemics – Neonatal Experience in Tuscany” (SPACE-NET) multicenter project. In this paper, we report data on potential predictors of emotional distress of healthcare professionals who work in neonatal wards (NWs) and neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

Procedures - Healthcare professionals of seven level-3 and six level-2 neonatal units in Tuscany (Italy) were invited to complete an online survey. Emotional distress (i.e., anxiety, depression, psychosomatic, post-traumatic stress symptoms and emotional exhaustion), Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and Behavioral Approach System (BAS) sensitivity, coping strategies and safety culture were assessed through well-validated, self-reported questionnaires.

Analytical plan - Differences in mean levels of personality, coping and safety between professionals from NICUs or NWs were determined by Student’s t tests. Forward stepwise multivariate regression analyses were performed to identify significant predictors of Emotional Distress for the total sample and separately for professionals from NWs and NICUs. Furthermore, we performed a two-step cluster analysis to exploratorily identify specific profiles of professionals in terms of personality, coping strategies and safety culture and their relationship with emotional distress.

Findings in brief - Greater BIS/BAS sensitivity, avoidance coping strategies and a sub-dimension of safety culture (i.e., stress recognition) were all associated with greater risk of emotional distress, whereas job satisfaction emerged as a protective factor. Neonatal wards and NICUs personnel presented different associations between personality, coping and safety culture.