The protective role of sense of coherence in resident physicians facing secondary trauma due to patient death in intensive care—A qualitative inquiry

Abstract

The salutogenic paradigm is increasingly used in research and practice but remains to be investigated in secondary trauma of health professionals. This qualitative study explored the main anchor of salutogenics, the sense-of-coherence, as a coping mechanism among resident physicians facing secondary trauma due to continuous exposure to patient suffering and deaths. Participants were sixteen resident physicians from intensive care units at emergency departments of two Israeli public tertiary hospitals. Data analysis employed reflexive thematic analysis. Findings suggest that while all residents described having comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness differed among residents. Some residents thrived, coped well with secondary trauma, centered on patient emotional needs, and drew meaningfulness from the challenges. Other residents suffered while providing care, reported poor well-being, were too overwhelmed to center patients, and doubted their career choices. Salutogenic-based interventions to cultivate the resilience of resident physicians experiencing secondary trauma are proposed.

Ethics statement

The ethics board of the College of management Academic Studies (IRB #0076) granted ethical approval for this study.

Disclosure statement

The author is reporting no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

All data supporting the results or analyses presented in the paper are found in the paper.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.