Abstract
Objectives: To determine the volume of health professionals who suffered distress due to their care of patients with COVID-19 and to analyse the direction in which the response capacity of the professionals to face future waves of COVID-19 is evolving.
Design: A cross-sectional study.
Setting: Primary care and hospitals in Spain.
Participants: A non-randomised sample of 685 professionals (physicians, nurses and other health staff).
Primary and secondary outcome measures: Frequency and intensity of stress responses measured by the Acute Stress of Health Professionals Caring COVID-19 Scale (EASE). Variation of stress responses according to the number of deaths per day per territory and the evolutionary stage of the COVID-19 outbreak measured by the Kruskal-Wallis and the Mann-Whitney U tests.
Results: The average score on the EASE Scale was 11.1 (SD 6.7) out of 30. Among the participants, 44.2% presented a good emotional adjustment, 27.4% a tolerable level of distress, 23.9% medium-high emotional load and 4.5% extreme acute stress. The stress responses were more intense in the most affected territories (12.1 vs 9.3, p=0.003) and during the disillusionment phase (12.7 vs 8.5 impact, 10.2 heroic and 9.8 honeymoon, p=0.000).
Conclusions: The pandemic has affected the mental health of a significant proportion of health professionals which may reduce their resilience in the face of future waves of COVID-19. The institutional approaches to support the psychological needs of health professionals are essential to ensure optimal care considering these results.
Keywords: anxiety disorders; depression & mood disorders; health policy; organisation of health services; public health; quality in health care.
【저자키워드】 public health, Health policy, anxiety disorders, depression &, mood disorders, quality in health care, Organisation of health services, 【초록키워드】 COVID-19, Resilience, pandemic, Anxiety, Depression, Stress, mental health, cross-sectional, hospital, Health, COVID-19 outbreak, response, Spain, death, Physicians, scale, Care, distress, Nurse, Acute stress, emotional, Support, Volume, intensity, Participants, average, secondary outcome, professional, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U, approach, extreme, affected, proportion, per day, determine, suffered, reduce, patients with COVID-19, psychological need, tolerable, 【제목키워드】 Stress, cross-sectional, COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare, Spain,