Table 2.
Stress awareness.
| Setting | PTSS criteria and degree of awareness | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Are medical emergency personnel at risk for extreme stress exposure? | No | Do extreme stress events have an impact on you? | Yes, but dependent from situation. Rather on others. | MH | / | / |
| In the past, but dependent of the situation | MH | / | / | |||
| SOST | B | 3 | ||||
| E | 3 | |||||
| In the past. Also seen in others. | SOST | E | 2 | |||
| Yes | In the past, but dependent of the situation. Also seen in others. | SOST | / | |||
| SOST | C | 0 | ||||
| D | 1 | |||||
| SOST | B | 0 | ||||
| SOST | / | |||||
| SOST | B | 0 | ||||
| E | 3 | |||||
| CH | E | 1 | ||||
| Yes | CH | C | 3 | |||
| E | 2 | |||||
| CH | B | 3 | ||||
| C | 2 | |||||
| D | 3 | |||||
| E | 3 | |||||
| CH | C | 2 | ||||
| D | 2 | |||||
| E | 3 | |||||
| Yes, but dependent from the situation. | MH | D | 3 | |||
| E | 2 | |||||
| MH | B | 1 | ||||
| E | 1 | |||||
| MH | B | 3 | ||||
| C | 1 | |||||
| D | 3 | |||||
| MH | / | / | ||||
| SOST | B | 0 | ||||
| D | 3 | |||||
| E | 2 | |||||
| CH | E | 3 | ||||
| CH | B | 3 | ||||
| D | 3 | |||||
| Not on me but on others. | CH | B | 0 | |||
| C | 3 | |||||
| E | 2 | |||||
| No | MH | B | 3 | |||
| C | 0 | |||||
| D | 0 | |||||
| E | 0 | |||||
This table displays a representation of how the interviewees experienced stress explicitly and implicitly. Explicitly: the responses refer to the questions whether the interviewees thought that emergency personnel is at risk for extreme stress exposure (columns one and two) and whether they thought stress events may impact them (columns three and four). Implicitly: whether they mentioned examples of post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs) throughout the interview without it being explicitly asked by the interviewer and if so what type of PTSSs (column 6). We also added for each interviewee their setting (column 5 and a degree of awareness (column 7), i.e., the extent that the interviewee assigned certain (changes in) behavior to stress or not). The table must be read in a vertical and horizontal manner. Vertically, as explained earlier. Horizontally, in that, one can read from the left to the right, for each individual, how they responded to questions 1 and 2, what setting they were part of, what PTSSs they eventually experienced, and to what extent they were aware of that.
PTSS criteria are “B” intrusion symptoms; “C” avoidance; “D” negative alterations in cognition and mood; and “E” alterations in arousal and reactivity. The degree of awareness refers to “0” no awareness; “1” recognized in colleagues; “2” someone made them aware of their described behavior; and “3” self-aware.