Professional quality of life among healthcare workers in a romanian intensive care unit: a descriptive correlational study

Abstract

Aims and objectives: To describe professional quality of life and examine associations between compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress among ICU healthcare workers in Romania.Background: ICU work involves high emotional and cognitive demands and may increase risk of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Evidence from Romanian ICU settings using the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) framework remains limited.Design: Cross-sectional, single-centre correlational study. Methods: Healthcare professionals working in a Romanian ICU completed the 30-item ProQOL questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, ProQOL cut-off categories and Pearson correlations were computed using jamovi (v2.4).Results: Participants reported relatively high levels of compassion satisfaction alongside moderate levels of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Burnout was negatively associated with compassion satisfaction and positively associated with secondary traumatic stress.Conclusions: Burnout is closely aligned with secondary traumatic stress, while compassion satisfaction shows a protective association. Mean scores and ProQOL cut-off distributions suggest high compassion satisfaction alongside mostly average burnout and secondary traumatic stress in this ICU sample.Relevance to clinical practice: Organisational approaches that reduce secondary traumatic stress and support compassion satisfaction may help sustain workforce wellbeing in intensive care settings.