Peer Review History
Original SubmissionMay 25, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-17265 Stress and Substance Abuse among workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in an Intensive Care Unit: a cross-sectional study. PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Pestana, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. The manuscript has been evaluated by three reviewers, and their comments are available below. The reviewers have raised a number of concerns that need attention, and they request additional information on methodological aspects of the study and the analyses, and they have requested additional contextualization and revisions to the language usage. Could you please revise the manuscript to carefully address the concerns raised? Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 28 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Vanessa Carels Staff Editor PLOS ONE Journal requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information. 3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 4. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The study provides findings on an important topic that is of concern during this pandemic. Nonetheless, there are several major amendments that will need to be made before it can be considered for publication. 1. I am not certain that the claim the authors make about how there are only a few research studies that have examined the occurrence of mental health problems in healthcare workers working in the ICU during the pandemic is valid. From what I understand, this topic has garnered a lot of interest and there is substantial literature that has emerged since the pandemic. Perhaps it may be more appropriate to limit this statement to the context of Brazil. 2. Although the discussion does follow from the findings of the analysis, there is a lack of reference to existing literature about the topic. Authors should attempt to use existing literature to support their conclusions, or to posit reasons for their findings. Similarly, the limitations section suggests that participants may have been afraid of suffering retaliation, leading to report bias. Reasons for this should be provided in greater detail, or citations for studies that have looked into this phenomenon should be given. Lastly, the section on practical implications of this study should have references to studies that have highlighted the importance of institutional support and/or long term intervention plans. 3. The appropriate statistical methods were chosen. 4. The authors are unable to make the data publicly available due to its sensitive nature, but it is available upon reasonable request. 5. The language errors make it difficult to understand at times, and the awkward expression of certain terms may cause readers to misunderstand what the authors are trying to convey. e.g "licensed from work" -- I believe the authors were trying to say that these healthcare workers were absent from work? "Although most of them shared their homes with individuals with greater risk for severe infection, only 21% of them left home during the pandemic" -- It is unclear why or how these individuals are at greater risk of severe infection. Do you mean to say they belong to a vulnerable population (e.g chronic illnesses/elderly)? The term "left home" should be more appropriately expressed as "sought alternative accommodation away from home". "However, with regards to the non-statistically significant associations, we believe they should be taken into account because of the biological plausibility they carry within them." -- Am not sure what biological plausibility means in this context "Pharmaceuticals" -- I believe it should be "pharmacists" 6. Other comments: - The abstract should not contain abbreviations that have not been spelled out in full at first mention. - Please provide a citation for the way the IES-R and ASSIST 2.0 scores were categorized. Are there scoring guidelines available? - Please refer to a standardized format (e.g APA) for the presentation of data in tables. The way it is currently organized can be confusing for readers. Also, all abbreviations in tables and its title (e.g ICU, IES-R) should be explained in the footnotes. Reviewer #2: The study is interesting but is single-centre. There is no comparison between the different critical care professions. The authors do not report anxiety or depression scores. Finally, the authors did not go into enough depth in their analyses. Reviewer #3: The title is accurate or relevant The aims of the study are clearly stated The study is original The study is useful and relevant to the aims of the Journal The design of the study is appropriate The sample size, selection and composition are appropriate Methods used to collect data (e.g. validated questionnaires and instruments, observational techniques) are appropriate Qualitative or quantitative methods used to analyse the data are appropriate Details of the methods (including settings and locations, procedures, dates of recruitment and follow-up or main outcomes) are clearly reported The data are less than 5 years old The study was approved by a research ethics committee prior to data collection Participants were asked for informed consent prior to data collection or informed consent was not required The qualitative or quantitative analyses were applied appropriately Missing data, e.g. non-respondents, drop-outs or non-responses, have been accounted for The results are clearly presented and explained No further qualitative or quantitative analysis is required The authors reflect on the strengths and limitations of the study The results are compared to related findings in the literature The results are discussed in relation to the relevant research, practice or policy issues The discussion and conclusions do not speculate beyond what has been shown in this study The article has a logical construction in a suitable format The article has an appropriate length (not unnecessarily long or too short to be useful) The writing is in a good standard of English, grammatically correct and easy to understand The abstract is in an unstructured format and is sufficiently informative Any tables and figures are all necessary, clearly annotated and easy to follow ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes: Modesto Leite Rolim Neto - Faculdade de Medicina - Universidade Federal do Cariri - UFCA [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 1 |
PONE-D-21-17265R1Stress and Substance Abuse among workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in an Intensive Care Unit: a cross-sectional study.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Pestana, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 28 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: I thank the authors for careful consideration of my previous comments. I am largely satisfied with the revisions made, but still have a few areas of concern as highlighted below: 1. In the Results section, Paragraph on "Psychiatric Medical History", I believe the p-values reported are erroneous. It should be p = .034 and p = .044. Similarly, the p-values in Table 3.2 will need to be checked again to ensure that they correspond to the text. 2. There are still issues with the language in multiple areas, although I greatly appreciate the effort undertaken by the authors to improve the language of the manuscript thus far. Some examples include: - [Incomplete sentence] "All the professionals working at an oncological COVID-19 ICU, regardless of their role (health professionals and non-health professionals), who were on duty for at least during one shift through the period of July to October/2020." - [Error indicated in caps] "Professionals with infected relatives .... significantly more likely to score higher in the IES-R, therefore more likely to suffer WITH PTSD or ASD." - [Error indicated in caps] "There was an association trend between higher scores and those who had sought alternative accommodation AWAY FROM during the pandemic ...." - [Error indicated in caps] "For cannabis, stimulants, and cocaine, higher scores had an ... direct EXPOSITION to infected patients." - [Error indicated in caps] "It is possible that those results REFLEX the availability of those substances." - ["Provided that" should be replaced with "GIVEN that some of those workers MAY HAVE HAD.."] Provided that some of those workers had psychological or psychiatric reasons for work leave, our findings can be underestimated. - [Should be phrased as "study had no FOLLOW-UP sessions] "Fourthly, as a cross-sectional study, it was not possible to determine causal relationships nor risk factors and the participants were not followed." 3. Minor suggestion to change the header "ASSIST 2.0 Results" to "Associations with substance abuse" instead. 4. Please provide the citation for the cut-off points/categorization of IES and ASSIST 2.0 scores after listing the cut-offs in order to allow readers to easily search for the original paper that provides these cut-offs. i.e "The IES-R scores were categorized as follows: 1-11 = few/no signs of ASD/PTSD; 12-32 = several signs of ASD/PTSD, patient monitoring is recommended; ≥33 = highly suggestive of ASD/PTSD, immediate psychiatric evaluation is recommended [INSERT CITATION HERE]." 5. Authors should consider elaborating a little on how their findings may be generalizable to ICUs outside Brazil. A suggestion is given below. "the current results are in accordance those presented by other authors, in other populations of ICU workers (e.g., Netherlands [4], Canada [20], United States [21], and England [19]), suggesting that findings from this study are applicable and should be taken into consideration by professionals working in ICUs globally." Reviewer #2: The authors have responded in a satisfactory manner to all comments. I have no additional comments to make. Reviewer #3: The design of the study is appropriate The writing is in a good standard of English, grammatically correct and easy to understand The results are clearly presented and explained [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 2 |
Stress and Substance Abuse among workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in an Intensive Care Unit: a cross-sectional study. PONE-D-21-17265R2 Dear Dr. Pestana, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-21-17265R2 Stress and substance abuse among workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in an intensive care unit: a cross-sectional study. Dear Dr. Vinicius Santinelli Pestana: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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