Background Healthcare workers (HCWs) have been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to their risk of direct exposure to the virus, they were subjected to long working hours, scarcity of PPE, and additional stressors that impacted their psychological wellbeing. The purpose of this study was to assess anxiety and its predictors among a sample of HCWs at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) and to evaluate the association between resilience and anxiety. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted using an online survey between March and June 2021 among HCWs at AUBMC. The psychosocial scale section included the 7-item generalized anxiety disorder (GAD-7) scale and a 25-item resilience scale, validated tools used to assess anxiety and resilience respectively. Data were analyzed on SPSS version 27, and descriptive statistics were applied. Predictors were evaluated using bivariate and multivariate linear regression. Results From a total of 92 participants, 75% were involved in direct patient care, and of those, 95% worked directly with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients. The majority (83%) had minimal to mild anxiety, whereas the rest had moderate to high anxiety levels. Around 41% reported moderately high to high resilience, 47% were found to be between the low end and moderate resilience scale and only 12% had very low or low resilience. More than 80% of the participants received PPE training, reported always working with adequate preventive infection control measures, and were vaccinated. Further, more than 70% of participants reported trusting the management and agreed that the safety of the workers is considered a high priority. No significant association between sociodemographic and COVID-19 work exposure factors with anxiety was found. Multivariate analysis results showed that a lower anxiety score was associated with higher resilience (p = 0.011). Conclusion This study has shown a strong association between low anxiety levels and high resilience scores in this group of mostly vaccinated HCWs caring for COVID-19 patients. The high percentage of vaccination along with PPE availability could explain the low anxiety levels reported among the participants.

The authors studied the rate of sickness-related absence of employees at a tertiary care center. They examined sickness-related absence records of employees, including nurses, food service workers, housekeeping, and security personnel, in a university teaching hospital in Lebanon over a period of 1 year. These departments included 1,010 employees, of which 47% took sickness absences during the study period. In all, 49.02% of the nursing employees, 43.67% of the food service workers, 37.79% of the housekeeping employees, and 47.5% of the protection/security workers took sickness-related absences. Employees in younger age groups took the majority of sicknessrelated absences; in general, these constituted short-duration sickness-related absences (relative to those taken by emploees in older age groups; dietary personnel were the exception to this pattern). Principal causes of sickness-related absences were respiratory illness and musculoskeletal problems. The authors observed that distribution of sickness-related absences among the departments studied was similar to the actual distribution of employees. They considered reasons for sicknessrelated absences as pertinent to each category.

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Background The main objective of this study is the development of a short reliable easy-to-use assessment tool in the aim of providing feedback to the reflective writings of medical students and residents. Methods This study took place in a major tertiary academic medical center in Beirut, Lebanon. Seventy-seven reflective essays written by 18 residents in the department of Family Medicine at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) were graded by 3 raters using the newly developed scale to assess the scale reliability. Following a comprehensive search and analysis of the literature, and based on their experience in reflective grading, the authors developed a concise 9-item scale to grade reflective essays through repeated cycles of development and analysis as well as the determination of the inter-rater reliability (IRR) using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) and Krippendorff’s Alpha. Results The inter-rater reliability of the new scale ranges from moderate to substantial with ICC of 0.78, 95% CI 0.64–0.86, p < 0.01 and Krippendorff’s Alpha was 0.49. Conclusions The newly developed scale, GRE-9, is a short, concise, easy-to-use reliable grading tool for reflective essays that has demonstrated moderate to substantial inter-rater reliability. This will enable raters to objectively grade reflective essays and provide informed feedback to residents and students.

Objectives Despite numerous initiatives, occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens (BBP) caused by percutaneous injuries or mucosal contamination remain common among healthcare workers (HCWs). These exposures were decreasing at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) in the previous decades. Recently, the medical center activity has been increasing with higher number of interventions performed and shorter hospital stay. Our aim was to determine the trend of incidents resulting from BBP exposures at AUBMC from 2014 till 2018 and identify whether the increase in hospital activity affected the rate of these exposures. We also aimed to assess the risk factors associated with needle stick injuries (NSIs). Methods A retrospective observational descriptive study of all exposures to BBPs among HCWs reported to the Environmental Health, Safety, and Risk Management department at the AUBMC between 2014 and 2018 was performed. Results There were 967 exposures reported among which 84% were due to needlesticks. Residents (40%), followed by nurses (30%), and then by attending physicians (16%) were the top three most exposed occupational groups. Half of the participants injured themselves using either a syringe or a suture needle; and mostly during or after use. Occupation and incident location were associated with NSIs. The mean BBP exposure incidence rate was 5.4 per 100 full-time employees, 65.6 per 100 bed-years, and 0.48 admission-years. The BBP exposure rate per 100 occupied beds per year decreased between 2014 and 2017 then increased in 2018 (P &lt; 0.001). The number of BBP exposures showed a strong, though non-significant negative correlation with the average length of hospital stay (Spearman correlation coefficient = −0.9, P = 0.083). Conclusions BBP exposure remains a serious occupational hazard. Our study shows that the BBP exposure rate per 100 occupied beds per year started decreasing during the study period before increasing again in 2018. Only the nursing department showed a consistent decrease of exposures. The occupation and incident location were found to be risk factors associated with NSIs. In addition to providing education and training, additional steps such as providing safety equipment and future interventions directed towards adjusting to higher workload should be all considered.