When the storm is the strongest: Healthcare staff’s health conditions and job satisfaction and their associated predictors during the epidemic peak of COVID-19

Abstract

This study reports the physical health, mental health, anxiety, depression, distress, and job satisfaction of healthcare staff in Iran when the country faced its highest number of total active COVID-19 cases. In a sample of 304 healthcare staff (doctors, nurses, radiologists, technicians, etc.), we found a sizable portion reached the cutoff levels of disorders in anxiety (28.0%), depression (30.6%), and distress (20.1%). Age, gender, education, access to PPE (personal protective equipment), healthcare institutions (public vs. private), and individual status of COVID-19 infection each predicted some but not all the outcome variables of SF-12, PHQ-4, K6, and job satisfaction. The healthcare workers varied greatly in their access to PPE and in their status of COVID-19 infection: negative (69.7%), unsure (28.0%), and positive (2.3%). The predictors were also different from those identified in previous studies of healthcare staff during the COVID-19 crisis in China. This study helps to identify the healthcare staff in need to enable more targeted help as healthcare staff in many countries are facing peaks in their COVID-19 cases.

Examination of Job Satisfaction and Anxiety Levels of Workers Working at COVID-19 Diagnostic Centers During the Pandemic

“…The women's anxiety level (Mean: 4.31±6.02) was significantly higher than that of men (Mean: 2.29±4.81). In the majority of the previous studies, similar to our results, the level of anxiety in women was higher (Pappa et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020aLai et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2020c;. On the other hand, some studies also reported that gender did not affect anxiety levels , Chen et al, 2020Zhang et al, 2020d).…”

“…When anxiety levels were analyzed in terms of marital status, there was no statistically significant difference between groups in this study (p>0.05). Similarly, previous studies did not found a significant difference in marital status (Zhang et al, 2020a;Chen et al, 2020).…”

“…In this study, it was found that there was no difference in anxiety levels by age (p>0.05), in parallel to the findings of some previous studies Chen et al, 2020). On the other hand, Zhang et al (2020a) stated that the older staff had better mental health than others in their study. Similarly, there was no difference in anxiety levels according to education levels (p>0.05), which was compatible with the previous reports Chen et al, 2020).…”

“…In many studies with healthcare workers during the COVID-19 outbreak, anxiety levels were at medium or high levels. Zhang et al (2020a) found the anxiety prevalence as 28%, while Liu et al found that it was 44.7%. In a study that health personnel was found to show symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety; those symptoms were observed seriously, 2.2% to 14.5% of all participants (Bohlken et al, 2020).…”

“…In a study that health personnel was found to show symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety; those symptoms were observed seriously, 2.2% to 14.5% of all participants (Bohlken et al, 2020). Zhang et al (2020a) found that in 28% of employees, the level of anxiety was at a level that "it should be initiated a clinical interview to determine whether mental disorders were present". In a study conducted on frontline health employees, the overall prevalences of the low, medium, and severe anxiety levels were 10.35%, 1.36%, and 0.78%, respectively .…”