Objective: Vicarious trauma (VT) is "secondhand" trauma healthcare workers experience when interacting with trauma survivors. The prospective relationship between workers' VT symptoms and physical health has not been studied.
Methods: Survey data from 775 hospital workers were linked to health insurance expenditures to identify stress-related conditions known as disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBIs) occurrence within 1-year follow-up. VT symptoms (modeled continuously and categorically) and conditional odds of developing DGBI were assessed with multilevel logistic regression.
Results: Conditional odds of DGBI increased 4% for every one-point increase in VT symptom score (95% confidence interval, 0.98 to 1.11; P = 0.17). Participants with high versus low VT symptoms had 3.40-times the conditional odds of DGBI (95% confidence interval, 1.44 to 8.06; P = 0.01).
Conclusion: Workers with high versus low VT symptoms had significantly higher odds of developing DGBIs, indicating that VT may adversely impact workers' physical health.
Keywords: claims data; disorders of gut-brain interaction; gastrointestinal disorders; healthcare workers; hospitals; occupational stress; vicarious trauma.
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.