Healthcare patterns among medical professionals

Abstract

The article is focused on attitudes of healthcare workers towards their health. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a substantial increase in media coverage of public health-related issues, has dramatically altered many people’s normal routines and caused a shift in our collective perception of normal. In this context, examining the attitudes of health care workers toward their health becomes particularly topical as this group possesses first-hand knowledge about the pandemic and various medical subjects. We consider medical professionals as specially-trained people who possess evidence-based knowledge about our body, mental, and physical health. Since it is a challenging job that involves being in close contact with people who are sick or recovering from illness, the risks of which have been exacerbated by the pandemic, this group has privileged access to professional medical services. We conducted a quantitative sociological survey among medical professionals who work for the Moscow Health Care System. This research allows us to analyze patterns of health care utilization and health behavior among health care workers and the correlation between their attitudes and perceptions of the problem and the actual patterns of their behavior. This paper aims to answer the following question: how do the level of medical knowledge and privileged access to a wide range of health care services and resources affect the attitudes toward one’s own health that are common among the so-called expert groups?