PAIN Empathy Assessment in Sleep Deprived Emergency & Acute Care Clinicians (PAIN-EASE)

Claude Bernard University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Empathy; Pain; Sleep

Treatments: Behavioral: Night shift work

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05235035

PAIN-EASE

Details and patient eligibility

About

Cognitive Empathy is relevant in clinical practice and will be assessed based on the accuracy of pain recognition and the pain intensity evaluation in a computerised task using facial expressions. Repeated measures across day and night shifts will provide the basis to understand the impact of shift work on those abilities in health care professionals.

Full description

Assessment and management of the pain patients experience is one of the key skills needed in the field of anesthesiology. The consideration of non-verbal cues is essential, especially the recognition of facial expressions. The human ability to recognize emotions in others depends on the capacity for empathy of an individual, specifically cognitive empathy. In the clinical context empathy is understood as a set of skills and competences rather than a character trait. It may therefore vary due to various parameters. Currently there is no research available on the influence of shift work on the human ability to recognize pain in facial expressions. However, work schedules that do not fit the natural circadian rhythm are known to alter the processing of emotions. In particular the ability to judge the intensity of an emotion is influenced. Therefore, the hypothesis of the present study will be, that shift work impairs the pain assessment performance of an individual. To test this hypothesis, the effect of shift work on the performance in recognizing and assessing pain intensity of faces by health care professionals in the anesthesia department will be assessed. A repeated measures assessment will be used.

Enrollment: 30 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Exclusion criteria:

• refuse to participate
• not working night shifts
• no patient contact

Inclusion criteria:

• working day and night shifts
• health care professional with patient contact

Trial design

30 participants in 1 patient group

health care professionals

Description:

Staff from the department of anesthesia and general resuscitation and thoracic cardiac pediatric with patient contact that regularly works in shifts including night shifts

Treatment:

Behavioral: Night shift work