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Workforce & wellbeing
HEMS burnout high even without PTSD
Psychological Well-Being of Helicopter Emergency Medical Service Personnel: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Survey
Air Medical Journal · 2026-10 · Added 25 October 2026
A nationwide survey of Danish HEMS personnel (73 of 82 responding) found no participant met criteria for PTSD, anxiety, depression or secondary traumatic stress despite high trauma exposure — but 48.6% exceeded the personal burnout cutoff and 23.2% the work-related burnout cutoff.
- Study type
- Cross-sectional
- Design
- Nationwide cross-sectional survey, Danish HEMS (April–May 2024)
- Participants
- 73 physicians, HEMS crew paramedics and pilots (89% response rate)
- Main finding
- 48.6% exceeded the personal burnout cutoff, 23.2% work-related and 17.4% patient-related; no one met PTSD criteria; trauma exposure correlated with PTSD symptoms (r=0.30) and work-related burnout (r=0.33)
- Caveat
- Cross-sectional self-report in a single country's physician-staffed HEMS, with wide confidence intervals on the between-group exposure comparisons
- Bottom line
- Hypothesis-generating
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). Physician-staffed HEMS is not our crewing model, but the pattern it shows — trauma scores low, burnout high — is one Australian critical-care and road crews will recognise from their own wellbeing surveys.
Learning goal
Recognise early signs of personal burnout in my critical care practice before they affect patient safety.
More
- Topic: Workforce & wellbeing
- Daily scan: 25 October 2026
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