Impact of working conditions and other determinants on the risk of substance misuse among healthcare residents: results of a cross-sectional study.

Abstract

Introduction: Substance misuse significantly impairs psychosocial functioning and correlates with many environmental factors, including working conditions. We investigated the influence of working conditions and other determinants on the risk of substance misuse among healthcare residents of city name withheld for review, France.

Methods: We conducted an online survey among medicine, dentistry and pharmacy residents of city name withheld for review from May 30, 2022, to July 15, 2022. Participants reported their age, sex, residency specialty, and living conditions and completed the French Job Content Questionnaire, the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test - Consumption, and questions exploring their current tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use. We constructed directed acyclic graphs to model the effect of working conditions on substance misuse and used them to perform multivariable logistic regressions.

Results: Among the 1,936 residents of the city name withheld for review subdivision, 904 (46.7%) completed the survey. Among these, 54.0% exhibited alcohol misuse, 23.7% reported tobacco misuse, and 34.5% reported illicit drug misuse. Working more than 48 hours per week was not associated with any substance misuse. Low social support at work predicted the use of illicit drugs (aOR: 1.49, 95% CI [1.04; 2.13]). Compared with general medicine residents, psychiatric residents had greater odds of reporting tobacco misuse (aOR: 2.28, 95% CI [1.14; 4.58]) and illicit drug misuse (aOR: 2.51, 95% CI [1.33; 4.74]). Pediatric and pharmacy residents had lower odds of reporting alcohol misuse (aOR: 0.42, 95% CI [0.21; 0.84] and OR: 0.53, 95% CI [0.28; 0.98], respectively).

Conclusions: Social support at work significantly impacts the risk of substance misuse among healthcare residents, as do other factors, such as residents' health specialty. These findings contribute to the development of appropriate institutional policies and support programs to improve the well-being of healthcare residents.