Anxiety among front-line health-care workers supporting patients with COVID-19: A global survey

Abstract

Objective We aimed to explore anxiety status across a broad range of HCWs supporting patients with COVID-19 in different global regions. Method This was an international online survey in which participation was on voluntary basis and data were submitted via Google Drive, across a two-week period starting from March 18, 2020. The Beck Anxiety Inventory was used to quantify the level of anxiety. Results 1416 HCWs (70.8% medical doctors, 26.2% nurses) responded to the survey from 75 countries. The distribution of anxiety levels was: normal/minimal ( n = 503, 35.5%), low ( n = 390, 27.5%); moderate ( n = 287, 20.3%), and severe ( n = 236, 16.7%). According to multiple generalized linear model, female gender ( p = 0.001), occupation (ie, being a nurse dealing directly with patients with COVID-19 [ p = 0.017]), being younger ( p = 0.001), reporting inadequate knowledge on COVID-19 ( p = 0.005), having insufficient personal protective equipment (p = 0.001) and poor access to hand sanitizers or liquid soaps ( p = 0.008), coexisting chronic disorders (p = 0.001) and existing mental health problems (p = 0.001), and higher income of countries where HCWs lived ( p = 0.048) were significantly associated with increased anxiety. Conclusions Front-line HCWs, regardless of the levels of COVID-19 transmission in their country, are anxious when they do not feel protected. Our findings suggest that anxiety could be mitigated ensuring sufficient levels of protective personal equipment alongside greater education and information .

Associations between the working experiences at frontline of COVID-19 pandemic and mental health of Korean public health doctors

“…The current study result is in concordance with recent studies of healthcare workers in German or Italy during COVID-19 that showed associations between working at COVID-19 frontline versus higher level of perceived stress or post-traumatic symptoms [44,49]. Further, other studies that examined mental health of medical professionals at frontline of COVID-19 pandemic also demonstrated increased odds of mental health worsening (depressive mood, anxiety, or burnout) in presence of working environments such as insufficient supply of personal protective equipment [50][51][52][53][54], endorsed barriers at working [55], increased physical and psychological workload [51,56,57], reduced amount of day-off and successive period of active duty after 24-h shifts [50]. Collectively, sufficient and timely supply of personal protective equipment and efficient distribution of rest period between the active duty are required for protection of mental health for PHDs at frontline of pandemic.…”

Prevalence, New Incidence, Course, and Risk Factors of PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, and Panic Disorder during the Covid-19 Pandemic in 11 Countries

“…Numerous multinational studies have already explored the prevalence of anxiety and depression during the pandemic and found a pooled prevalence of anxiety and depression varying widely from 11.6% to 58.9% and 16.1% and 69%, respectively [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. However, none of these multinational studies had reported the prevalence and incidence of PTSD and panic disorder.…”

Psychological Impact During the First Outbreak of COVID-19 on Frontline Health Care Workers in Shanghai

“…These conditions could possibly affect their psychological well-being. It is expected that the current epidemic has placed significant stresses on people including HCWs, especially during the first outbreak when there was limited knowedge regarding its transmission, disease course, and pathogenesis (7) anxiety, and stress because of COVID-19 (8)(9)(10)(11). Previous studies has shown that many of the HCWs presented high levels of psychological distress during these outbreaks such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (12), H1N1 (13), and H7N9 (14) outbreaks.…”