%0 Journal Article
%T Development, validation, and cut-off points for a questionnaire to measure sources of stress in veterinary medicine (SOS-VetMed).
%A Osca A
%A Millán L
%A Vela L
%A Barrado J
%J BMC Public Health
%V 24
%N 1
%D 2024 Aug 9
%M 39123174
%F 4.135
%R 10.1186/s12889-024-19704-2
%X <B>BACKGROUND: </B>Occupational stress is a serious problem in veterinary medicine; however, validated instruments to measure this problem are lacking. The aim of the current study was to address this literature gap by designing and validating a questionnaire and establishing the cut-off points for identifying veterinarians with high and low levels of stress.<BR><B>METHODS: </B>The study involved two sub-studies with two Spanish samples. The first study (N = 30 veterinarians; 66.7% women; 63.33% from small animal clinics) investigated the factors related to the work environment that caused the most stress; the results were analyzed using thematic content analysis. The second study (N = 1082; 70.8% women; 71.4% from small animal clinics) involved designing and validating a questionnaire to measure sources of stress in veterinary medicine, as well as establishing the cut-off points for interpreting the results using receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis.<BR><B>RESULTS: </B>The first study showed the main sources of stress and allowed items to be defined for the questionnaire. The second study validated the Sources of Stress in Veterinarian Medicine (SOS-VetMed) questionnaire and confirmed five sources of stress with adequate reliability and validity indices: "work overload," "work-family conflict," "emotional burden of work," "organizational factors," and "emergency problems." Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses verified a structure of five factors (Cronbach's alpha values ranging between 0.92 and 0.69). The five subscales of the SOS-VetMed questionnaire were positively correlated with two indicators of distress: "psychological complaints" and "psychosomatic complaints." The cut-off points indicated that 45.83% and 19.95% of the veterinarians surveyed had high and low levels of stress, respectively.<BR><B>CONCLUSIONS: </B>The results confirmed that the SOS-VetMed questionnaire could be used to determine the stress levels of veterinarians and to design intervention programs to improve their workplace health.