ArticleBMC emergency medicine2026
Association between workload and support utilisation - a longitudinal study on emergency medical service personnel.
Article in BMC emergency medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSocial support is a key protective factor against mental illness. Yet, qualitative studies have suggested that emergency medical service (EMS) personnel working in ambulance contexts underutilise workplace-provided social support. Although a possible barrier to seeking support, no previous quantitative study has examined workload’s association with support utilisation in high-strain emergency settings. This study assesses the longitudinal association between EMS personnel’s workload and utilisation of workplace-provided formal support in an ambulance context.
methods703 personnel from a Danish EMS organisation were invited to participate in the study. The survey data were collected from 2022 to 2023 over five survey rounds. Survey data were combined with organisational records of emergency responses from the same period, providing a measure of workload at a station level. Logistic mixed models were performed to assess associations between workload, measured by number of emergency responses, and formal support utilisation. Main analyses were performed using R-Studio (version 4.4.2).
resultsOf the 703 invited personnel, 341 participated in repeated survey rounds. At the final wave, 642 employees were eligible, corresponding to a response rate of 53.2% of possible participants at final wave. 82.1% of the participants were male, and 17.8% were female. The mean age of the participants was 42.13 years. EMS personnel at higher-workload stations were more likely to use support than those at lower-workload stations (OR = 2.03, CI = 1.26; 3.35). This effect persisted after adjusting for age, gender, workplace social capital, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and time effect (OR = 1.93, CI = 1.12; 3.35).
conclusionThis is the first study examining EMS personnel’s workload and social support utilisation in a longitudinal design. Contrasting qualitative findings, this study presents evidence of greater support utilisation under higher workload. With reference to the Conservation of Resources Theory, the results could reflect a need to conserve resources under pressure, and underline the importance of accessible support in high-risk occupations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.