Fertility Physicians’ Coping with their Position – The Association between Elements of the Cognitive Response, Post-Traumatic Stress and Growth

Studies on infertility focus on the experience of women and sometimes also on the feelings of the partners. However, the perspective of the fertility specialists has not been researched to the same extent. If, at all, the studies have focused on negative aspects of the treatment of infertility and did not consider subsequent positive ramifications, such as the chances of experiencing post-traumatic growth. The current study is based on the Cognitive Growth and Stress Model (CGAS) (Brooks et al., 2017), which was originally examined among individuals who experienced trauma due to a wide variety of events. Inspired by CGAS, this study examined stress and growth among fertility physicians, as a result of their daily encounters with professional stress events. Based on the DSM's fifth edition, we considered the fertility specialist to be a person who experiences stressful events through the accompanying of patients in times of trauma and crisis, during the medical process. We refer to physicians as those whose daily professional environment and experiences may trigger post-traumatic symptoms. The aim of the study was to examine the associations between cognitive aspects (perception of control, rumination and the centrality of the event), on the one hand, and stress and post-traumatic growth, on the other, among fertility physicians.

The study's participants comprised 111 fertility physicians, (84 men, 26 women and one participant who did not report gender) who were asked to complete a series of self-report questionnaires either manually or through an electronic media (computer or telephone) according to the doctor’s preference: perceived stress, post-traumatic growth, the centrality of the event, rumination, control, and background information Findings revealed significant positive correlations between rumination and centrality of the event, on one hand, and stress and growth, on the other. In addition, a significant negative correlation was found between the perception of control and stress, but no significant correlation was found between the perception of control and growth. In addition, whereas the perception of control did not mediate the relationship between rumination and stress, nor the relationship between rumination and post-traumatic growth; it is the centrality of the event that mediated the association between rumination and stress and between rumination and post-traumatic growth. That is, the higher the rumination, the higher is perception of the centrality of the event, and the higher the centrality of the event, the higher the stress and post-traumatic growth. Moreover, it turned out that there was a significant, relatively weak association between stress and post-traumatic growth. Thus, the higher the stress, the higher the post-traumatic growth. However, in the regression analysis, neither the linear nor the curvilineal associations between stress and growth were found to be significant.

The findings of this study contribute to deepening the understanding of the coping mechanism of fertility physicians and of cognitive processes that may be significant and valuable for an experience of growth. The findings regarding stress and growth in the context of the role of fertility physicians, and the insights that were obtained regarding the cognitive process and its' components, will enable the design and construction of training programs that can support the physician according to nature of the role, help mitigate stress, and promote their growth.