The risk of mental health problems and the symptoms of burnout are higher among health workers, who are calling for management training in humanized leadership, according to data from the Portuguese Laboratory for Healthy Work Environments (LABPATS).
The data is contained in a study that will be presented on Wednesday at the Portuguese Medical Association and which analyzed more than 2,100 health workers, including nurses, doctors, operational assistants, senior technicians, pharmacists, psychologists, administrators and managers.
The coordinator of this work, Tânia Gaspar, who leads LABPATS, recalls that the situation had worsened after the pandemic, then stabilized, but has not yet recovered to pre-covid-19 values.
Tânia Gaspar, who had already led the national study on healthy working environments in various areas of work – released in May – says that the figures collected “are worrying”.
“We need urgent action. Those people who thought that after the pandemic they could do nothing and that things would go back to normal by themselves, it’s proven that it’s not happening,” the expert warned, pointing out that professionals are starting to “switch off”, that “the ‘putting on the shirt’ has diminished” and that the private sector is increasingly competitive, as it currently invests a lot in the possibility of research.
With a PhD in health organization management, Tânia Gaspar studied public-private partnerships (PPPs), private and public hospitals and recalls that “PPPs had the best of both worlds because they didn’t have to go out and get clients, (…) the clients were fixed, but the quality assurance model was much more robust, effective and provided other conditions”.
“We really have to rethink everything and take urgent action in this area because health professionals, compared to other professionals, are at greater risk,” he said.
As well as attributing a high risk to the Mental Health dimension, the study concludes that it is professionals from the younger generations (Z and Y, aged up to 40/45) who show less involvement at work and lower perceived performance. It is also those from generation Z (up to the age of 34) who have the worst mental health indicators.
“A health professional who is unwell will affect their work with the patient and situations can be very serious,” the researcher recalls.
On the other hand, professionals from older generations (generation X and the ‘baby boom’, i.e. those over 44) have a more positive perception of community involvement.
“We’ve noticed that students in higher education also have difficulties in the area of mental health and this area of health ends up having a big investment, a big burden. These young people already come from their education quite fragile and then they enter the job market and end up showing more difficulties,” she explains.
Tânia Gaspar says that with regard to young people’s expectations of the world of work, “what is happening is a defense mechanism. You open the door to the future to these young people and it’s really all uncertainty, a lack of happiness, of well-being… it’s all negative things. And then they think: ‘I’m not going to invest my energy, my expectations, in something that seems so negative’.”
The researcher also believes that young people who are not in the health sector are coping better.
“Young people place more value on reconciling their professional life with their well-being and personal life. Here in the health sector, probably because of the demands of the profession, they are unable to do this,” she warned.
The expert also draws attention to another aggravating factor: more than one in four (25.4%) health professionals say they have been the target of threats or other forms of physical and psychological abuse.
“Workplace harassment is higher among health professionals than among other professionals, where we had figures of 19%,” said the researcher, also warning of the urgency of taking measures in this area.
“If I were Minister of Health, I’d be really worried,” she concluded.
