Development and Application of Global Health Events-Mental Stress Scale for Assessment of Medical Staff’s Acute Mental Stress Responses

Abstract

Background

Medical workers have been increasingly involved in emergent public health events, which can lead to severe stress. However, no standardized, officially recognized, unified tool exists for mental distress measurement in medical workers who experienced the public health events.

Purpose

In the present study, we propose the Global Health Events-Mental Stress Scale (GHE-MSS), as a revised version of the Impact of Event Scale-Revision (IES-R), for assessment of medical workers’ acute mental stress responses within one month and their chronic mental stress responses within six months after major health events.

Patients and methods

The IES-R was slightly modified, developed, and its reliability and validity were tested using the Delphi survey, primary survey with 115 participants, formal survey with 300 participants, and clinical evaluation with 566 participants.

Results

Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a promising validity of the scale. The values of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, the Spearman-Brown coefficient, and the retested Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale applied for the clinical evaluation were 0.88, 0.87, and 0.98, respectively, which confirmed a good internal consistency and stability. The results of the goodness-of-fit test indicated a good adaptation of the model. A correlation analysis was conducted to assess the correlation between the GHE-MSS and the PCL-C, which had a correlation coefficient of 0.68 (P<0.01).

Conclusion

GHE-MSS can be applied with a promising reliability and validity for the assessment of the acute mental stress response of medical workers experiencing public health events. This method can also be used for the screening of mental stress-associated disorders.

Keywords:

• IES-R
• global health events
• mental stress scale
• medical workers
• mental disorders
• mental stress responses

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Nursing Department of Shantou Central Hospital. We would like to express our gratitude to Ms. Li-Xian Yang from the Second People’s Hospital of Shantou, Ms. Qiu-Lian Lin from the Third People’s Hospital of Shantou, Ms. Li-Fang Lin from Chao-yang District People’s Hospital of Shantou, and Dr. Qing-Hua Huang from Nan-ao County People’s Hospital of Shantou for their contributions to the study. We are also thankful to Professor Kitty K. Wu for approving the use of the CIES-R. Special thanks are due to Professor Marmar Charles for approving the use of IES-R. This study was financially supported by the Shantou Science and Technology Plan Medical and Health Category Project (Grant No. Shan-Fu-Ke [2020]23-03).

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.