Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is exerting a high pressure on healthcare systems all over the world. Italy, in particular, being one of the first Western countries to be struck by the contagion, has seen the number of recovered -and deceased- patients increase alarmingly, thus increasing the workload and the demands for healthcare professionals. This situation has the potential to put several healthcare operators at risk of developing high levels of work-related distress and burnout due to the exposure to emotionally difficult situations, uncertainty, and personal risk. A sample of 532 Italian physicians, nurses, and other professionals answered an online survey addressing their levels of burnout (through the Maslach Burnout Inventory) and frequency of experienced psycho-somatic symptoms, along with some ad hoc items regarding job demands. Results show that levels of burnout and experienced symptoms are correlated with the increased demands due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while finding a meaning in one’s own work is correlated with personal gratification. Urgent measures to address concerns regarding the wellbeing of health workers are a necessary key point of the response to the current pandemic.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted healthcare systems worldwide, unlike anything else in the last few decades: during the emergency, operating rooms have been transformed into ICUs, healthcare professionals of many different backgrounds have been drafted into emergency work, and many of them have contracted the disease as well
In our sample of Italian healthcare professionals, levels of burnout were high: according to the Italian cut-off criteria for healthcare workers (Sirigatti and Stefanile, 1993), 41% showed high levels of Emotional Exhaustion, and 27% high levels of Depersonalization, while only 57% were really gaining high levels of gratification from their own work
The COVID-19 pandemic was demanding a high toll from Italian healthcare professionals: 91.8% of the sample agreed with the statement that “the COVID-19 emergency puts me more frequently in touch with other people’s suffering,” while 70.6% agreed with the statement “My job is putting me at serious risk.”
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted healthcare systems worldwide, unlike anything else in the last few decades: during the emergency, operating rooms have been transformed into ICUs, healthcare professionals of many different backgrounds have been drafted into emergency work, and many of them have contracted the disease as well. They experienced unprecedented psychological and physical symptoms of grief in response to patients’ suffering and death (Li et al, 2020; Barello et al, 2020a) They have been exposed to traumatic events and situations that could lead to significant distress and moral suffering (Delfrate et al, 2018; Barello and Guendalina, 2020; Radbruch et al, 2020; Barello et al, 2020b), such as difficult triage decisions regarding the allocation of limited resources to the patients that they are personally taking care of Selman et al (2020). Our survey comprised a checklist of psycho-somatic symptoms that could have been experienced by healthcare professionals under heavy workloads and distress: participants were asked to report the frequency of these symptoms in the last 4 weeks on a 6-point scale from “never” to “usually.” The answers were averaged to calculate an index of “psycho-somatic distress.” All participants provided written informed consent and the study was approved by the Catholic University Ethical Commission (approval number 2020–04)
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