Fear of COVID-19 among Health Care Workers: Roles of Resilience, Meaning in Life, And Proximity of Working with COVID-19 Patients

Abstract

Background: While the COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact on most of the world's population, fear of COVID-19 has especially affected health care workers (HCW) who are on the battlefield with the virus. Yet, the factors that determine the level of fear of COVID-19 among HCWs are still obscure. Methods: A survey whose participants were 705 HCWs including physicians, nurses, administrative and other medical personnel. Multiple regression analysis was implemented to assess the relationship between demographic covariates, psychological variables, and fear of COVID-19. A second survey was conducted following the vaccination program. Results: Resilience, meaning in life, age, gender, and role in hospital (administration) were found to be significant in explaining the variance in fear of COVID-19 after controlling the effect of other predicting variables in the model. Among them, resilience was the most robust predictor for fear of COVID-19, indicating that HCW with higher resilience were less affected by fear of COVID-19. No difference was found in the level of fear of COVID-19 as well as other psychological variables in the second survey conducted after the vaccination phase in Israel. Discussion: The results suggest that among HCWs, those who work closely with patients carrying COVID-19, and those with greater resilience, have had significantly less fear of COVID-19. These findings emphasize the need to enhance resilience in order to reduce the psychological burden of the pandemic as well as other prolonged , stressogenic events among HCWs.