A Wake-up Call for Burnout in Portuguese Physicians During the COVID-19 Outbreak: National Survey Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 outbreak has imposed physical and psychological pressure on health care professionals, including frontline physicians. Hence, evaluating the mental health status of physicians during the current pandemic is important to define future preventive guidelines among health care stakeholders. OBJECTIVE In this study, we intended to study alterations in the mental health status of Portuguese physicians working at the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic and potential sociodemographic factors influencing their mental health status. METHODS A nationwide survey was conducted during May 4-25, 2020, to infer differences in mental health status (depression, anxiety, stress, and obsessive compulsive symptoms) between Portuguese physicians working at the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic and other nonfrontline physicians. A representative sample of 420 participants stratified by age, sex, and the geographic region was analyzed (200 frontline and 220 nonfrontline participants). Moreover, we explored the influence of several sociodemographic factors on mental health variables including age, sex, living conditions, and household composition. RESULTS Our results show that being female (β=1.1; <i>t</i>=2.5; <i>P</i>=.01) and working at the frontline (β=1.4; <i>t</i>=2.9; <i>P</i>=.004) are potential risk factors for stress. In contrast, having a house with green space was a potentially beneficial factor for stress (β=–1.5; <i>t</i>=–2.5; <i>P</i>=.01) and anxiety (β=–1.1; <i>t</i>=–2.4; <i>P</i>=.02). CONCLUSIONS It is important to apply protective mental health measures for physicians to avoid the long-term effects of stress, such as burnout.

The COVID-19 pandemic and obsessive-compulsive disorder: a systematic review of comparisons between males and females

“…As in the first section, which was done among the general population, the conflicting results of studies conducted among obsessive-compulsive patients do not lead us to a definite conclusion. Four studies also examined this relationship among hospital staff and health care workers (Juan et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020;Ahmed et al, 2021;Ferreira et al, 2021). A study in Europe did not consider gender a risk factor (Ferreira et al, 2021), but two studies conducted in China yielded conflicting results, with one of them considering gender not as a risk factor (Zhang et al, 2020), as in a European study, but the second study emphasised the role of female gender in OCD (Juan et al, 2020).…”

“…Four studies also examined this relationship among hospital staff and health care workers (Juan et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020;Ahmed et al, 2021;Ferreira et al, 2021). A study in Europe did not consider gender a risk factor (Ferreira et al, 2021), but two studies conducted in China yielded conflicting results, with one of them considering gender not as a risk factor (Zhang et al, 2020), as in a European study, but the second study emphasised the role of female gender in OCD (Juan et al, 2020). Also, a study in Egypt that examined the mentioned relationship among the general population and health care workers also emphasised the role of the female gender (Ahmed et al, 2021).…”

“…The studies conducted in Europe provide different results from the studies in the Middle East. Of the seven studies conducted in Europe (Davide et al, 2020;Mazza et al, 2020;Munk et al, 2020;Ferreira et al, 2021;Højgaard et al, 2021;Meda et al, 2021;, none considered male gender as a risk factor, so that two of them directly emphasised the role of female gender (Mazza et al, 2020;Højgaard et al, 2021) and the other five did not consider gender as a risk factor at all (Davide et al, 2020;Munk et al, 2020;Ferreira et al, 2021;Meda et al, 2021; (Fig. 5).…”

“…Although these studies were established in four different continents, the fact that nearly half (four articles) of these studies were established in the middle east, cannot be ignored, and it may negatively affect the generality of the results of this section. Also, five studies in the second section were established in Europe, which is a remarkably high percentage (50.0%) for a specific region (Davide et al, 2020;Munk et al, 2020;Ferreira et al, 2021;Meda et al, 2021; (Fig. 6).…”

“…Articles can be reviewed based on another category. If we divide the articles into three sections, so that the first section (nine articles) refers to articles that consider the female gender as a risk factor for OCD (Abuhmaidan & Al-Majali, 2020;Darvishi et al, 2020;Ahmed et al, 2021;El J uan et al, 2020;Mazza et al, 2020;Othman et al, 2021;Fontenelle et al, 2021;Højgaard et al, 2021;McKune et al, 2021), the second section (11 articles) refers to articles that did not consider gender as a risk factor at all (Davide et al, 2020;Aftab et al, 2021;Alateeq et al, 2021;Ferreira et al, 2021;Munk et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020;Zheng et al, 2020;Dehkordi et al, 2021;Meda et al, 2021;Taher et al, 2021), and the third section (4 articles) including the articles that considered male gender as a risk factor (Abba-Aji et al, 2020;Ji et al, 2020;AlHusseini et al, 2021;Samuels et al, 2021), we can make the following comparisons (needs to be mentioned that there are two articles in the third section that in a number of cases have stated that neither male nor female gender was risk factors, but because in a number of items male gender was expressed as a risk factor, we brought in this section and in previous sections of the discussion, we discussed these articles in detail (Abba-Aji et al, 2020;Ji et al, 2020):…”