What Resilience Skills Do Emergency Workers Need During a Widespread Phase of a Socio-Health Emergency? A Focus on the Role of Hardiness and Resilience
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Intro: Good description of burnout. Comprehensive review of contributing factors to emergency stress secondary trauma and burnout. Good description of resilience and hardiness and the factors that lead to these personality traits. Presented some studies showing protective effects of hardiness and resilience and the development of burnout symptoms. Clearly described hypotheses of this study.
M+M: Participants, sociodemographic questionnaire, study questionnaire tools and statistical methods were well described.
Results: Nicely broken up to discuss each hypothesis. Tables clearly labelled and relatively easy to follow. Need to check placement of decimal points in chart numbers.
Discussion and Limitations: Comprehensive discussion looking at all the variables and impact on stress and burnout. The stress that rescuers seem to develop in emergency situations appears to be more specific and not generic and more specific tools may be needed to properly assess this. Study highlights risk and protective factors. Study limitations noted are appropriate.
Conclusions: The study results support the risk and protective factors for the development of stress and burnout. It supports that developing training programs to increase resilience and hardiness should help volunteer emergency health workers to better protect their psychological wellness and prevent against burnout.
Needs minor English corrections
Value of study is that it supports the development of specific training programs to increase resilience and hardiness. Next step is to find (or develop) programs and test them.
Author Response
Reviewer 1
intro: Good description of burnout. Comprehensive review of contributing factors to emergency stress secondary trauma and burnout. Good description of resilience and hardiness and the factors that lead to these personality traits. Presented some studies showing protective effects of hardiness and resilience and the development of burnout symptoms. Clearly described hypotheses of this study.
M+M: Participants, sociodemographic questionnaire, study questionnaire tools and statistical methods were well described.
Results: Nicely broken up to discuss each hypothesis. Tables clearly labelled and relatively easy to follow. Need to check placement of decimal points in chart numbers.
Discussion and Limitations: Comprehensive discussion looking at all the variables and impact on stress and burnout. The stress that rescuers seem to develop in emergency situations appears to be more specific and not generic and more specific tools may be needed to properly assess this. Study highlights risk and protective factors. Study limitations noted are appropriate.
Conclusions: The study results support the risk and protective factors for the development of stress and burnout. It supports that developing training programs to increase resilience and hardiness should help volunteer emergency health workers to better protect their psychological wellness and prevent against burnout.
Reply: We sincerely thank the reviewer for the comments and suggestions. We have made some changes following the suggestions of the second reviewer, trying to give more importance to the application implications that the results of this study may have. We checked the tables and decimals, correcting some errors. Changes are marked in red
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsYour article, "What resilience skills do emergency workers need during a widespread phase of a socio-health emergency?", is a significant and timely contribution to understanding the protective roles of hardiness and resilience in mitigating stress, secondary trauma, and burnout among emergency workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study’s methodology is rigorous, and the findings provide actionable insights, particularly the moderating effects of hardiness (e.g., "commitment" and "challenge") and resilience on burnout components. These results have important implications for designing resilience-building interventions.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Title and Abstract: Emphasize the unique focus on hardiness and resilience in the title and include specific statistical findings in the abstract to enhance impact.
- Methodology: Clarify the rationale for focusing on Italian Red Cross volunteers and discuss generalizability.
- Discussion: Expand on practical applications of findings, such as concrete training recommendations, and explicitly address study limitations.
- Clarity: Simplify technical jargon in the results section for broader accessibility.
With minor revisions to enhance clarity, structure, and practical implications, this article is highly suited for publication.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Your article, "What resilience skills do emergency workers need during a widespread phase of a socio-health emergency?", is a significant and timely contribution to understanding the protective roles of hardiness and resilience in mitigating stress, secondary trauma, and burnout among emergency workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study’s methodology is rigorous, and the findings provide actionable insights, particularly the moderating effects of hardiness (e.g., "commitment" and "challenge") and resilience on burnout components. These results have important implications for designing resilience-building interventions.
Reply: thank you very much for your appreciation of our study
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Title and Abstract: Emphasize the unique focus on hardiness and resilience in the title and include specific statistical findings in the abstract to enhance impact.
Reply: We thank the reviewer for the suggestion. We changed the title to the following: What resilience skills do emergency workers need during a widespread phase of a socio-health emergency? A focus on the role of hardiness and resilience
We have made changes in the abstract to emphasize the results
During the emergency phases, hardiness played a greater protective role on burnout than resilience skills. Hardiness was found to be a good moderator of both emergency stress and avoidance and intrusion of secondary trauma. Connor-Davidson resilience showed a significant moderating effect between the components of secondary trauma and burnout.
- Methodology: Clarify the rationale for focusing on Italian Red Cross volunteers and discuss generalizability.
Reply: In the methodological section we explained the rationale for choosing the sample
“The red cross volunteers are rescue workers present throughout the national territory who undergo constant training. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Board of Directors had asked to follow specific training on staff who had carried out interventions in various emergency situations, adhering to the research project of our university”.
in the conclusions we specified that, “considering the size of the sample and given that the training specialization of the Red Cross volunteers and the nature of their interventions is similar to that of other emergency volunteer organizations, the results obtained can also be extended and generalizable to other realities of emergency intervention”.
- Discussion: Expand on practical applications of findings, such as concrete training recommendations, and explicitly address study limitations.
Reply: We thank the reviewer for this helpful suggestion. We have indicated some possible forms of concrete training at the end of the discussion
- Clarity: Simplify technical jargon in the results section for broader accessibility.
With minor revisions to enhance clarity, structure, and practical implications, this article is highly suited for publication.
Reply: We thank the reviewer for the helpful suggestions. We have added some explanations in the results section to make the text simpler and clearer
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
