"Healthcare Kamikazes" during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Purpose in Life and Moral Courage as Mediators of Psychopathology.

Ignacio Zaera,Vicente Mañes,Iván Echeverria,Ana Benito,Rafael Mora,Gonzalo Haro,Isabel Almodóvar,Marc Peraire,Isabel Camacho

doi:10.3390/ijerph18147235

Abstract

Although the required personal protective equipment was not available during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Spanish healthcare workers continued to work, being dubbed as ‘healthcare kamikazes’. Two possible reasons are moral courage and purpose in life that, in turn, would modulate the appearance of psychopathology. Cross-sectional study was carried out in 90 Spanish and 59 Mexican healthcare professionals, and 56 medical and nursing students. Spanish professionals had suffered more work and overall exposure (M = 8.30; SD = 2.57 and M = 9.03; SD = 2.66) than Mexican (M = 5.10; SD = 1.87 and M = 5.55; SD = 2.35). Mexican professionals had fewer anxiety disorders (30.5%; n = 18) and a lower depression score (M = 4.45; SD = 5.63) than the Spanish (43.7%; n = 38; and M = 8.69; SD = 8.07). Spanish professionals more often experienced acute stress disorder (32.6%; n = 29). Purpose in life, in addition to having a direct protective effect on psychopathology, also modulated the relationship between personal and family exposure and psychopathology. In conclusion, purpose in life protects against the appearance of psychopathology in healthcare workers with personal and family exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

Highlights

On 31 December 2019, an outbreak of 27 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China
In agreement with of other studies showing that high our work showed that when facing personal and family exposure to SARS-CoV-2, high scores were related with the appearance of lower levels of anxiety, the results of our work
A high level of purpose in life (PIL) reduced the emergence of deshowed that when facing personal and family exposure to SARS-CoV-2, high PIL reduced pression, as demonstrated elsewhere [25,26], but the PIL did not modulate the relathe appearance of anxiety

Summary

Introduction

On 31 December 2019, an outbreak of 27 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The causative agent of this pneumonia turned out to be a new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, with the clinical picture caused by this virus being denominated COVID-19. Since the WHO declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, there have been 107 million confirmed cases worldwide, with more than three million cases in Spain. Because of the unexpected nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Spanish health system was overwhelmed, leading to moments when there were shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, disposable gowns, protective screens, etc. Up to 26% of all the people infected by coronavirus in Spain during the first wave were healthcare professionals compared to around 9% in other countries such as Italy [1]. Healthcare workers did not stop providing care, which is why the New York Times dubbed them ‘healthcare kamikazes’ [2]

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