Older, more religious, male and more experienced Jewish and Arab health-care workers who treated victims of Hamas’s terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, tended to fare better handling the trauma than their colleagues did, according to a new study by Israeli researchers.
Dr. Dikla Agur Cohen and Dr. Merav Sudarsky—both of the medical faculty at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Clalit Health Services family medicine department—published a paper on the matter that appears in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Family Medicine.
The researchers surveyed 129 Arab, Druze and Jewish family physicians, nurses, medical secretaries and social workers, whom they reached via professional social networks. Some 90% of respondents, who were surveyed between Oct. 15 and Nov. 20, 2023, were Jewish, and 78% were women.
The respondents were 49 years old, on average, and 78% lived outside of conflict zones. More than half (53%) had more than 15 years of professional experience, 78% were secular, and the rest, evenly split, were traditional and religious. Three in 10 reported working daily with victims of severe trauma.
“Primary-care clinicians often bear significant burdens during wartime, confronting the mental and physical suffering of individuals, families and communities,” the researchers wrote. “Exposure to traumatic experiences can lead to secondary traumatization, impacting clinicians’ mental health and job performance.”
“Research often overlooks the well-being of health-care clinicians, particularly within primary-care settings, despite their known exposure to trauma,” they added. “This study addresses this gap by investigating the levels of well-being, resilience and burnout among primary-care staff treating severely traumatized patients.”
The scholars found “marginally significant differences” when it came to gender and religious affiliation, and “significant results regarding well-being and the extent of exposure to traumatized patients.”
“Exposure to traumatized patients for one month correlated with higher depersonalization levels compared with those not exposed,” they wrote. “Professional experience emerged as a protective factor for well-being and mental exhaustion, while a negative correlation was observed between increasing age and depersonalization.” (Depersonalization refers to disassociating from oneself.)
They added that their analysis “revealed a negative correlation between increasing age and depersonalization” (meaning, older health-care professionals depersonalized less) and “a protective effect of professional experience on well-being.”
“Age and religious affiliation emerged as significant predictors of mental exhaustion,” the researchers added. “In addition, males reported higher levels of well-being than did females.”
They added that there is a need to better emphasize “sustained mental health support in communities grappling with prolonged crises” and to understand more fully the ways that trauma impacts various health-care workers.
“Surprisingly, residence in conflict zones does not significantly influence well-being, suggesting the universality of mental health challenges among primary care medical personnel, irrespective of geopolitical proximity,” they wrote. “Furthermore, the study reveals religiosity-related differences, indicating a nuanced relationship between faith, coping mechanisms and mental exhaustion.”
The article is one of four about “the impact of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on family doctors and patients in the region” published in the journal’s November-December issue.
