Vicarious trauma and the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of organisations

Vicarious trauma (VT) is an occupational challenge incurred through hearing about traumatic experiences of others such as child maltreatment, mass casualties, and others while serving in helping professions. Without sufficient resources and support, long-term exposure can lead to symptoms such as intrusion, avoidance, arousal, emotional numbing, anxiety, and decline in one's ability to work. Organisations can mitigate VT's impact by addressing the needs of staff through 5 evidence-informed areas of occupational health. This project explored the impact of VT-informed practices on organisational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We compared responses from 50 organisations on strengths and weaknesses in core areas of being VT-informed to how those organisations responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Subscales of the VT Organizational Readiness Guide (VT-ORG) were utilized as the exposure variables and 4 new COVID-19 questions served as the outcome. We ran a series of multilevel linear regression models with clustering controlled for at the organisational level. Staff ratings on 4 of the 5 pillars of the VT-ORG were positively associated with the organisation's responsiveness to the pandemic. Various demographic factors of the employees were negatively associated with organisations' responsiveness to the pandemic. While this study contributes to the growing research on VT, it also provides justification for helping organisations to become VT-informed; it provides evidence that being prepared for VT can also be useful to support workers and their communities during emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.