Critical Issues of Working during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Italian Healthcare Workers’ Experience

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted on healthcare services’ organization and healthcare workers’ mental health, increasing the risk of psychological symptoms and burnout. Italy has been one of the most affected countries, especially the northern regions, even with exceptions in some rural provinces. Aim: We chose to investigate the mental health conditions of healthcare workers operating in the rural province of Rovigo (a small town in Veneto, northern Italy), where relatively few deaths and contagions were reported during the pandemic, even if Veneto—globally—was one of the most affected regions of Italy. We wanted to verify the psychological outcomes of health workers operating in a context where the impact of the pandemic appeared to be relatively mild. Methods: Through an online survey, we investigated perceived difficulties at work and in daily life, perceived loneliness and social support, coping strategies, and level of psychological distress (sample size: 749; mean age = 48.04 years, SD = 10.66). The questionnaire had both open- (2) and close-ended questions (5 single-choice and 13 multiple-choice). We verified possible associations between sex, age group, work department and percentage of responses with chi-square tests of independence on each question. Data cleaning excluded all contradictory answers from the multiple-choice questions from the analyses (final sample size: 640). Results: Frontliners and non-frontliners reported a similar experience of the COVID-19 pandemic (without significant differences in perceived difficulties, coping strategies and sources of support). Nevertheless, they still reported various forms of negative emotions (e.g., helplessness—40.94%; sadness—36.56%; frustration—32.66%) and lack of support from the health organization (especially frontliners—28.72%). However, psychological help was scarcely requested. Conclusions: Despite the province not being massively affected by the pandemic, healthcare workers felt the need for clearer and more supportive guidance. They seem to perceive collective opportunities to share needs and difficulties as more useful than individual interventions (as those provided by the ad hoc created listening service).

Burnout and its associated factors among healthcare workers and the general working population in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic: a nationwide cross-sectional internet-based study

“…A study showed that HCWs have not sufficiently coped with occupational stress, such as hopelessness, sadness or frustration during the COVID-19 pandemic. 38 Furthermore, poor work-life integration (WLI), characterised by conflicts of career and personal responsibilities, is responsible for burnout, 39 and may have become evident during the pandemic among HCWs. Factors associated with burnout identified in this study, such as being single and working long hours, are risk factors for both job stress and poor WLI, 38 39 and might have strongly contributed to burnout during the pandemic.…”

Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave

“…In contrast, a group approach would have been more adequate as it allows sharing needs and difficulties together. However, HCWs also reported to believe their problems were not severe enough to require these services and to be able to manage them on their own, despite the high psychological distress reported ( 39 – 42 ).…”

Overview of dreadful consequences of SARS-CoV-2 invasion in Italy from March 2020 to March 2022

“…Since the severity of the disease started to elevate, it became really hard to cope with the increasing cases of hospitalisations of COVID-19 patients. Thus, availability of general beds along with intensive care beds tended to decrease and the health professionals were obligated to work for more than their prescribed hours (Vicentini et al 2022 ). Not only that, due to the lack ability of the NHS, patients were treated depending on their severity, giving priority to the patients requiring immediate respiratory support (Michelozzi et al 2020 ).…”

“…Not only that, due to the lack ability of the NHS, patients were treated depending on their severity, giving priority to the patients requiring immediate respiratory support (Michelozzi et al 2020 ). Besides, most of the health care workers had suffered from symptoms like weakness, fever, cough due to constant exposure to this contagious infection without any adequate amount of self-protected equipment such as PPE, surgical masks and sanitizers (Mansueto et al 2021 ; Vicentini et al 2022 ). In addition, few studies have published that the health worker acquired serious mental health problems like anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances and high levels of stress due to COVID-19 risk factors along with extreme work pressure and anger for the unexpected pandemic scenario as well as the unawareness of NHS system (Mansueto et al 2021 ; Vicentini et al 2022 , De et al 2021 ).…”