Abstract
This study investigated the buffering role of hope between perceived stress and health outcomes among front-line medical staff treating patients with suspected COVID-19 infection in Shenzhen, China. In the cross-sectional study with online questionnaires, medical staff's perceived stress, anxiety, depression, sleep quality, and hope were measured by the 10-item Chinese Perceived Stress Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and the Locus-of-Hope Scale, respectively. A total of 319 eligible front-line medical staff participated. The prevalence of anxiety (29.70%), depression (28.80%), poor sleep quality (38.90%) indicated that a considerable proportion of medical staff experienced mood and sleep disturbances during the COVID-19 pandemic. Internal locus-of-hope significantly moderated the effects of stress on anxiety, depression, and sleep quality. Moreover, external family locus-of-hope and external peer locus-of-hope significantly moderated the association between perceived stress and depression. The prevalence of symptoms indicates that both mental and physical health outcomes of front-line medical staff deserve more attention. Internal and external locus-of-hope functioned differently as protective factors for medical staffs' health and might be promising targets for intervention.
Highlights
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading in many parts of the world since December 2019, including in some provinces of China
Perceived stress was negatively correlated with each dimension of locus-of-hope, and positively correlated with health outcomes of medical staff
This was the first study to directly investigate the relationship between perceived stress and health outcomes among front-line medical staff from the perspective of positive psychology during the outbreak of COVID-19 in China
Summary
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading in many parts of the world since December 2019, including in some provinces of China. In January 2020, the government of Guangdong Province launched the level one response toward this major public health emergency. As a city in Guangdong Province with a large number of migrant workers moving from other cities in China, responded rapidly and formulated emergency plans for epidemic control. Our department of medical humanities had been providing on-site psychological support for front-line medical staff in a tertiary hospital in Shenzhen from the end of January to the end of March of 2020. This tertiary hospital is a designated hospital treating patients with suspected COVID-19 infection in Shenzhen. Front-line medical staff in this tertiary hospital have been exposed to multiple stress sources, such as the risk of contracting COVID-19, wearing protective equipment for continuously 4–6 h, increased workload, shift work together with social isolation during the rest period
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