Assessing Occupational Stress and Preparedness Among Campus Safety Officers and Dental School Employees at an Academic Medical Center During COVID-19

Job stress can lead to adverse physical and emotional health effects in employees. It is worse during an emergency or pandemic. This cross-sectional study looked at Campus Safety Officers and Dental School employees, who’s work puts them at risk for COVID-19 exposure. We hypothesized that Campus Safety Officers and Dental School employees who felt adequately trained to conduct COVID-19 related work would not feel more stressed during the COVID-19 pandemic than they did before the pandemic. We provided a self-administered questionnaire to 148 employees between April and July 2020. Of the 148 questionnaires, 147 were included in our study. There were 42 Campus Safety Officers (28.6%) and 105 Dental School employees (71.4%). Most study participants were younger than 40 years of age (51.1%), and male (52.4%). Forty-four had over 20 years of work experience. We found a significant association between employee perception of stress, perception of adequate training to conduct pandemic work (p≤0.0001), and gender (p=0.022). Although most study participants felt adequately trained to conduct work relating to COVID-19 (60.9%), they still felt more stressed during the pandemic than before (47.6%). Mental health support is critical to reduce the impact of stress.