Experts know that a pandemic can increase stress-related absenteeism among health-care workers. To help prevent this, a team of Mount Sinai Hospital psychiatrists and nurses have developed The Pandemic Influenza Stress Vaccine, a computerized course for health-care workers worldwide to build their resilience during a pandemic.
Based on the SARS outbreak in 2003, Mount Sinai experts understand that the spike in health-care workers' stress-related absenteeism results from fear of contagion, concern for family health, job stress, interpersonal, isolation, and perceived stigma. That's why Mount Sinai researchers Dr. Robert Maunder and Dr. William Lancee led a pilot study of computerized training for 150 Mount Sinai health-care workers in 2009. The results suggest that the training improves health-care workers' belief that they can handle the changes a pandemic brings, confidence in support and training, and interpersonal problems. This also suggests that the training may be able reduce stress-related absenteeism.
From these findings, the researchers are launching The Pandemic Influenza Stress Vaccine course, which will be an education tool and also the basis of pandemic resilience research.
"We want to prevent stress-related absenteeism by teaching health-care workers how to cope and using education to build their confidence," explains Dr. Maunder. "Our pilot study suggests that the course works when it is provided to health-care workers prior to a pandemic in order to reduce the impact of stress after exposure. Now that the H1N1 pandemic has started, there is a strong incentive to provide the course to English-speaking health-care workers worldwide." At the same time, Dr. Maunder emphasizes the need to test the training under real-world conditions.