Abstract
BackgroundStudies have shown that health care workers (HCWs), as front liners of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, are at high risk for psychological symptoms, but few studies have compared these symptoms in infected and non-infected HCWs. This study compares psychological symptoms among these two groups.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, 938 HCWs from various medical fields working in the leading general hospitals of Alborz province, Iran, were selected using a multistage sampling method. The participants had contact with COVID-19 patients. Post-traumatic stress disorder-8 (PTSD-8) is a validated questionnaire that we used to evaluate PTSD symptoms along with its subscales, including intrusion, avoidance, and hypervigilance. Also, the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21 questionnaire was used to assess the severity of the aforementioned conditions in HCWs. Multivariate logistic regression was used to compare psychological symptoms in infected and non-infected HCWs.ResultsAmong 938 included HCWs, 55 had a history of confirmed COVID-19 infection. Prevalence of stress, anxiety, depression, intrusion, hypervigilance, and avoidance among infected HCWs were significantly higher in comparison to non-infected HCWs. In the multivariate logistic model, history of COVID-19 infection among HCWs was associated with a significantly increased risk of anxiety, depression, stress, intrusion, hyper-vigilance, and avoidance.ConclusionThe present study showed that the HCWs with COVID-19 infection were at a high risk of displaying psychological symptoms. Therefore, it is also necessary to develop psychological support and interventions for HCWs, especially those who got infected with the virus.
Highlights
The late coronavirus pandemic gave rise to many catastrophic events
Several studies show that health care workers (HCWs) as the front-line of the COVID-19 pandemic are at high risk for developing psychological symptoms such as stress, anxiety and depression, due to their vital role in management of patients and the higher probability of infection; to our knowledge no studies have compared these symptoms in infected and non-infected HCWs [7, 15]
Our results showed that the risk of psychological symptoms such as anxiety, stress, depression, intrusion, hypervigilance and avoidance was higher in infected HCWs with COVID-19 disease
Summary
The late coronavirus pandemic gave rise to many catastrophic events. Till January second, 2021, more than 82,579,768 got infected, and more than 1,818, 849 have died [1]. One other problem that arose from the limited resources was the lack of an adequate number of physicians and health care workers (HCWs) that led to the recruitment of HCWs without pandemic training in the field of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) [3]. This inevitable situation made everyone question the ability to manage these difficult conditions in these dire times [4].
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