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Assessing Psychological Resilience and Stress Symptoms in Health Care Workers Following the 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2025

Hatice Polat Open the ORCID record for Hatice Polat [Opens in a new window] ,
Kerim Uğur Open the ORCID record for Kerim Uğur [Opens in a new window]  and
Tunahan Sun
Hatice Polat
Affiliation:
Faculty of Health Sciences, Malatya Turgut Özal University , Malatya, Turkey
Kerim Uğur*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Malatya Turgut Özal University , Malatya, Turkey
Tunahan Sun
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Düziçi State Hospital, Osmaniye, Turkey
*
Corresponding author: Kerim Uğur; Email: kerim.ugur@ozal.edu.tr
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Abstract

Objectives

The study was conducted to assess the psychological resilience and stress symptoms in health care workers following the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake.

Methods

The study was completed with a sample size of 313 health care workers who experienced the earthquake and was carried out in a descriptive and correlational design. The Sociodemographic Data Form, Brief Psychological Resilience Scale (BPRS), and Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale-5 (TSSS-5) were used.

Results

The study found that 39.6% of health care workers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, 41.2% of participants considered leaving their jobs after the earthquake, and 79.9% reported a decrease in job motivation (slight or a lot). It was determined that there was a negative correlation between the participants’ BPRS scores and TSSS-5 scores (r:-0.523, P = 0.00).

Conclusions

In accordance with the findings of our study, it can be posited that traumatic stress symptoms diminished as the level of psychological resilience increased in health care workers who experienced the earthquake.

Keywords

disasterearthquakehealth care workersposttraumatic stresspsychological resilience

Information

Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 19 , 2025 , e243
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc

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