Psychosocial risks at work for paediatric health professionals

Abstract Introduction Psychosocial risks have arisen, associated with new types of employment contracts, significant emotional demands, difficulties to balance work and personal life and job instability among other factors, leading to significant job dissatisfaction and negatively affecting the workers’ health, as well as their quality of life. Objective To determine the presence of psychosocial risks among different health professional profiles in different paediatric services. Method and participants A cross-sectional descriptive study with the participation of 138 paediatric health professionals. In order to evaluate psychosocial risk factors, the Fpsico 3.1 evaluation method was applied. Results Paediatric health professionals are in a relatively good position on a psychosocial level, although significant differences were found in relation to length of service in paediatrics and cognitive demands according to sex; furthermore, paediatric residents showed the highest levels of psychosocial risk. In the intensive care unit the psychological demands were higher, followed by pediatric hospitalization, being in these two units where they score higher in emotional demands. However, temporal autonomy risk was higher in the emergency and pediatric observation units. Conclusions The working conditions of health professionals make them vulnerable to these psychosocial factors, which vary according to professional category and area of work.