Abstract
Objective: Vicarious trauma (VT) is "secondhand" trauma healthcare workers experience when interacting with trauma survivors. The prospective relationship between workers' VT symptoms and physical health has not been studied.Methods: Survey data from 775 hospital workers were linked to health insurance expenditures to identify stress-related conditions known as disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI) occurrence within one-year follow-up. VT symptoms (modeled continuously and categorically) and conditional odds of developing DGBI were assessed with multilevel logistic regression.Results: Conditional odds of DGBI increased 4% for every one-point increase in VT symptom score (95% CI: 0.98-1.11, p = 0.17). Participants with high versus low VT symptoms had 3.40-times the conditional odds of DGBI (95% CI: 1.44-8.06, p = 0.01).Conclusion: Workers with high versus low VT symptoms had significantly higher odds of developing DGBIs, indicating that VT may adversely impact workers' physical health.