Emotional responses to potentially traumatic events: An interpretative qualitative analysis of high-risk professionals in relation to their social structures

Renate Geuzinge; Merel Visse; Eric Vermetten; Joachim Duyndam

doi:10.1016/j.ssmqr.2025.100629

Emotional responses to potentially traumatic events: An interpretative qualitative analysis of high-risk professionals in relation to their social structures

Renate Geuzinge
, Merel Visse
, Eric Vermetten
, Joachim Duyndam

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Professionals in emergency-focused environments are taught to prioritize emergencies over their own emotions and trained to suppress their own emotional reactions. High-risk professionals in a vertical social structure, such as police officers, military personnel, career firefighters, and perioperative nurses, also tend to develop an us-versus-them mentality with emotional distance from patients or civilians.

Original language	English
Article number	100629
Number of pages	12
Journal	SSM - Qualitative Research in Health
Volume	8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2025.100629
Publication status	Published - Dec 2025

Keywords

Emotional responses
Firefighters
Military personnel
Perioperative nurses
Police officers
Social structure
Trauma

Themes from the UHS research agenda

Life course, loss and grief
Humanist chaplaincy and meaning making

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10.1016/j.ssmqr.2025.100629Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Professionals in emergency-focused environments are taught to prioritize emergencies over their own emotions and trained to suppress their own emotional reactions. High-risk professionals in a vertical social structure, such as police officers, military personnel, career firefighters, and perioperative nurses, also tend to develop an us-versus-them mentality with emotional distance from patients or civilians.",

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Emotional responses to potentially traumatic events: An interpretative qualitative analysis of high-risk professionals in relation to their social structures

Abstract

Keywords

Themes from the UHS research agenda

Access to Document

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