Sense-making, burnout and coping strategies of health-careworkers in vaccine services during COVID-19 outbreak : an Italian study

Psychological literature on health-care workers (HCWs) during COVID-19 outbreak has scarcely explored the possible relationship between shared sense-making around work context experiences, burnout, and coping strategies. The aim of the present study is to explore the interplay between shared meanings around work context experiences, burnout, and coping strategies, in a sample of Italian HCWs. At the time of the study, all participants (administrative staff, nurses, and physicians) were employed in the vaccine services against COVID-19 outbreak of Romagna Local Health Authority. A sample of 155 professionals (71.6% women) were administered an online survey exploring shared experiences on six topics related to the pandemic work context (i.e., vaccines, relationships with coworkers, vaccine services, Romagna Local Health Authority RLHA, Regional Health System of Emilia-Romagna RHS and subjective feelings about post-pandemic situation) and psychological dimensions such as burnout and

coping strategies. Cluster analysis and multiple correspondence analysis enabled the identification of four clusters, or shared sense-making dimensions (respectively marked by optimism, scepticism, efficiency, and frustration), conceived along three main latent factors, influencing the representation of HCWs' experiences within the work context. These factors are optimism/pessimism (factor 1), relationship/task orientation (factor 2) and inefficacy/efficacy (factor 3). One-way ANOVA revealed differences on burnout and coping strategies based on the identified clusters. Pearson's correlations showed statistically significant associations between burnout measures and some coping strategies. In this study we found that different shared sense-making dimensions (i.e., clusters), around the pandemic work context experiences, are associated with the variation of burnout measures and coping strategies. [Publisher's text]