Psychological responses among nurses caring for patients with COVID-19: a comparative study in China

Honggang Ren,Xingguang Luo,Yong Zhang,Yu Sun,Qin Yin,Pengcheng Yang,Fang Zhu,Yingzhen Du,Yincheng Wang,Hui Zuo,Runsheng Wang,Xiaoyun Guo,Chao Hu,Huiru Hou,Yahui Wang,Qinyong Hu,Guogang Xu

doi:10.1038/s41398-020-00993-1

Abstract

Frontline healthcare nurses devoted themselves to deal with the outbreak of COVID-19, saving many lives. However, they are under incredible unknown psychological pressures with a considerable risk of infection. In this study, a self-administered questionnaire was used to survey 593 frontline nurses in Wuhan City and non-Hubei provinces for psychological responses from March 1 to March 10, 2020. Compared with nurses outside Hubei Province, those working in Wuhan were more likely to feel physically and mentally exhausted. Their probable depression and anxiety were significantly higher than those of nurses outside Hubei province (31.2%, 18.3% vs. 13.8%, 5.9%). Correspondingly, the depressive symptoms were more often reported in the Wuhan group (70.8% vs. 41.4%). Although Wuhan received wishes, concerns, and abundant psychological and material resources from all of the world, the survey-based study found that frontline nurses in Wuhan still had higher depression and anxiety with less social support compared with nurses from non-Hubei provinces. Unexpectedly, only 4.0% of nurses have sought psychological assistance. These findings suggested that the short-term psychological impact of frontline nurses in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak was extremely high compared with nurses outside Hubei Province. This research enlightened the efficient integration of psychological resources, the optimization of the nurse emergency psychological assistance system, and the mental health care of medical staff during the outbreak of epidemics.

Highlights

Introduction InDecember 2019, unnamed pneumonia appeared inWuhan, China, with unexplained pathogenesis
The proportion of participants working in the intensive care unit (ICU) was slightly higher in the Wuhan group (4.5%) than that in the non-Hubei group (1.8%)
Compared with the non-Hubei group, Table 6 shows that the Wuhan group received less social support according to the reported Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS) total scores. To our knowledge, this is the first comparative study on psychological responses focused on depression and anxiety in frontline healthcare nurses

Summary

Introduction

Introduction InDecember 2019, unnamed pneumonia appeared inWuhan, China, with unexplained pathogenesis. The Wuhan city, Hubei province, is at the center of the pandemic in China. It has had the vast majority of cases and deaths compared to cities outside Hubei province in China[6]. This outbreak may have led to psychological conflicts between the responsibility to care for the ill and their right to protect themselves from potential varying degrees of illness[7]. We hypothesize that the psychological impact of COVID-19 on nurses in Wuhan was greater than that of their colleagues outside Hubei province. A better understanding of such impacts is important for developing methods and related service system of preventative interventions for the future mass health crisis

Methods

Results

Conclusion