Abstract
BackgroundsHealthcare providers (HCPs) in COVID-19 epidemic face stressful workload of disease management, shortage of protective equipment and high risk of infection and mortality. These stressors affect greatly their mental health. The aim is to identify working conditions among Egyptian HCPs during COVID-19 epidemic as well as stigma and worry perceptions from contracting COVID-19 infection and their predictors.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among 565 HCPs. Data was collected through Google online self-administered questionnaire comprised seven parts: demographics characteristics, knowledge and attitude of COVID-19, working condition, worry of contracting COVID-19 at work, discrimination intention at work for COVID-19 patients, stigma assessment using impact stigma, and internalized shame scales.ResultsThe vast majority of HCPs (94.7%) were worried from contracting COVID-19 at work. Risk factors for perceiving severe worry from contracting COVID-19 were expecting infection as a severe illness, believing that infection will not be successfully controlled, improbability to continue working during the pandemic even if in a well/fit health, high discrimination intention and impact stigma scales. Significantly high impact stigma scores were detected among those aged < 30 years, females, workers primarily in sites susceptible for contracting COVID-19 infection, those had severe worry from contracting infection at work, and high internalized shame scale. The risk factors for perceiving higher internalized shame scores were not having a previous experience in working during a pandemic, high discrimination intention towards COVID-19 patients and high impact stigma scale.ConclusionsConsiderable levels of worry and stigma were detected among Egyptian HCPs during COVID-19 outbreak. The psychological aspect of health care providers should not be overlooked during epidemic; appropriate institutional mental health support should be provided especially for young HCPs, those without previous work experience in epidemic and those who work in high-risk units. Raising the community awareness about contribution of HCPs in fighting the epidemic might decrease stigmatization action toward HCPs.
Highlights
Since the announcement of the Chinese authorities in Wuhan City on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in December 2019, the epidemic has expanded from Wuhan throughout China and disseminated to every country across the world [1]
Females represented 70.6% of the participants, urban residents formed more than three quarters (77.3%) and the majority (95.4%) were residing in Upper Egypt
We present the results of a survey investigating the knowledge, attitude, worry from contracting COVID-19 infection, and its stigma among Egyptian Healthcare providers (HCPs) and analyzing potential risk factors for their perceived worry and stigmatization
Summary
Since the announcement of the Chinese authorities in Wuhan City on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in December 2019, the epidemic has expanded from Wuhan throughout China and disseminated to every country across the world [1]. As of 30 November, 2021 there are 261.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5.2 million deaths worldwide [2]. COVID-19 infection occurs mainly by contact or droplet transmission. Airborne infection may develop in case of respiratory aerosols production with patient respiratory activity or medical procedures [3]. Similar to the preceding communicable disease epidemics, healthcare workers in COVID-19 epidemic are at the front line in terms of risk of infection and mortality [4]. Health care systems worldwide have become overburdened with possibly infectious patients seeking testing and health care. Personal protective equipment (PPEs) are important during the current COVID-19 pandemic [3]. A critical lack of protective equipment is predicted to occur or has already occurred in high demand areas [5]
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