Abstract
Community pharmacists are essential front-line health workers, involved in relieving the COVID-19 burden. Their health-related quality of life status needs to be assessed, as lower levels could affect their functioning. In order to evaluate the current status of community pharmacists’ quality of life from Romania and Bulgaria during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify factors associated with their decision on being vaccinated to prevent COVID-19, an online survey involving 395 community pharmacists was conducted from 15th July 2020 to 15th August 2020. The 15D instrument was used for quality-of-life assessment. The pharmacists’ recommendations for vitamin C and D intake during the COVID-19 pandemic were also analyzed in order to promote future training programs for community pharmacists. Descriptive statistics, comparative analyses between pharmacists from Romania and Bulgaria, and multiple correlation analyses were performed on the collected data. Significant differences were observed for the level of quality of life between the two groups of pharmacists according to their age; smaller values, directly correlated with their age (total 15D score and age: Spearman r = 0.168, p = 0.022), were obtained for Bulgarian pharmacists regarding sleeping, usual activities, mental function, discomfort and symptoms, depression, distress. The perception of being vaccinated did not differ between Romanian and Bulgarian pharmacists, as almost 50% agreed to vaccination (p = 0.7542). Their willingness to vaccinate was correlated with vitamin D usage (p = 0.0134), rather than with vitamin C (p = 0.4157). No other significant associations were found between willingness to get vaccinated to prevent COVID-19 and other characteristics (age, gender, income, quality-of-life markers). Evidence-based interventions are required to enhance the health-related quality of life of community pharmacists involved in the first line of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
Over a year has passed since the first declared case of COVID-19, a life-threatening infection, on 31st of December 2019, and all of our socio-economic life aspects have been affected while facing this worldwide pandemic [1,2,3,4]
Our aim was to analyze the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of community pharmacists from Romania and Bulgaria during the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify factors associated with perception of being vaccinated against COVID-19, in order to provide evidence-based interventions to community pharmacists to improve vaccine use
The sample included 395 pharmacists working in community pharmacies with possible contacts with COVID-19 patients: 241 from Romania and 154 from Bulgaria
Summary
Over a year has passed since the first declared case of COVID-19, a life-threatening infection, on 31st of December 2019, and all of our socio-economic life aspects have been affected while facing this worldwide pandemic [1,2,3,4]. Frontline health workers have reached unprecedented anxiety levels, as information regarding contagiousness and pharmacotherapeutic management remains uncertain [1]. Inter-professional collaboration among healthcare settings, including community pharmacies, is highly recommended in order to face and manage the COVID-19 pandemic [2]. Pharmaceutical services cannot be offered from a remote location, little information about COVID-19 exposure and prevalence among community pharmacists is noted [9,10], which could be underestimated [7,10]
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