Stress and burnout among health-care workers in the coronavirus disease 2019 intensive care unit.

Abstract

Since late December 2019, the city of Wuhan in China has reported a novel pneumonia caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has now spread domestically and internationally. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unthinkable consequences and has challenged and, in numerous cases, beaten the capacity of hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs) worldwide to handle it. Apart from the obvious burden of patient care, extended work timings, and fear of personal safety, health-care workers (HCWs) also suffer from occupational stress as a result of lack of skills, organizational factors, and low social support at work leading to distress, burnout, and psychosomatic problems. This leads to stress, direct deterioration in quality of life as well as the quality of service provided. In this article, the authors navigate on the root cause of stress that is peculiar to the HCWs deployed in the ICU and suggest recommendations to alleviate it. To aid in the research, we searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, NIOSHTIC-2, and Web of Science up to May 2021.