NCT04959838

JOB STRESS in OPHthalmology Physicians and Residents

Monitoring of JOB STRESS Related to Night Shifts in OPHthalmology Physicians and Residents

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 30 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University Hospital, Clermont-Ferrand · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Ophthalmology physicians and residents work under stress conditions during night emergency ophthalmology shifts. Under time pressure, that is a characteristic of the urgency of care, they must use all their cognitive resources to make an accurate diagnosis and to provide accurate decisions, with sometimes surgical emergency acts. In addition, in France, they work at night following by an usual day work, and they can also work 48 consecutive hours during weekends, followed by a work day … i.e. 60 consecutive hours of work … Long working hours with a short recovery time has been demonstrated to be a major factor of stress and fatigue. Even if not demonstrated on ophthalmologists, those working conditions may contribute to symptoms of mental exhaustion and physical fatigue (sleep deprivation), often accompanied by a loss of motivation at work. This may leads to a feeling of loss of time control; stress can also distort the perception of time and leads to hasty actions or delayed decision-making. The combined effects of stress, feelings of loss of time control, and fatigue necessarily have an impact on work performance and work quality, with a high risk of medical error. Moreover, prolonged stress may expose ophthalmologists to a higher risk of multiple diseases, predominantly systemic inflammation and coronary heart disease. The main hypothesis is that prolonged work (up to 60 consecutive working hours) may impact on HRV, comparatively to a typical working day.

Detailed description

The JOBSTRESS.OPH protocol was designed to study the impact of prolonged work (up to 60 consecutive working hours) on HRV, comparatively to a typical working day. Each residents and / or ophthalmology physicians participates up to a maximum of 5 times. Participants wears a heart rate belt and a watch that measures physical activity and skin conductance for 34 hours straight. Participants only wears an EEG monitor while sleeping to assess its quality. At the end of the evaluation session, a simulator test mimicking the successive stages of cataract surgery is performed, as well as the performance of saliva tests. Short quality of life assessment questionnaires are completed at the start and end of the day, supplemented by a general questionnaire completed only once during the study. Statistical analysis will be performed using Stata software (v15, Stata-Corp, College Station, US). Categorical parameters will be described in terms of numbers and frequencies, whereas continuous variables will be expressed as mean and standard deviation or median and \[inter-quartile range\] according to statistical distribution. All statistical tests will be two-sided and p\<0.05 will be considered significant. Graphic representations will be complete presentations of results. Investigators process multivariate physiological series (HRV, SC, biomarkers) in order to build a stress index. For such multivariate physiological series, investigators first use change point analysis on each univariate series in order to get clusters with constant parameters, then investigators use classification algorithm on the constant parameters obtained in first step in order to obtain different classes corresponding to different levels of stress. Eventually, investigators obtain at each time the level of stress and can compare it to the environmental conditions.

Conditions

• Stress
• Heart Rate Variability

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Impact of prolonged work	Evaluate the impact of prolonged work (up to 60 consecutive hours) on the surgical capacities evaluated on a simulator, as well as on stress markers (questionnaires, saliva assays, skin conductance, quality of sleep) compared to a standard day.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-07-06
• Primary completion: 2027-07-01
• Completion: 2027-07-01
• First posted: 2021-07-13
• Last updated: 2025-03-14

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France