The findings showed that health care providers suffered from severe posttraumatic symptoms after exposure to prolonged war stress. This level of trauma among health care providers warrants intervention programs to reduce stress and trauma among Gaza health care providers after the war.
Introduction: Coronaviruses hit the world at the end of 2019, but the first two cases inGaza Strip were diagnosed on 21 March in the quarantine centers. Nurses working with infected or suspected cases are at high risk to get the disease which may generate anxiety among them. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Palestinian nurses employed by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza Strip, Palestine.
Materials and methods: A toal of 424 nurses completed an online questionnaire packet that included demographic data and the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7).
Results: Results from this study revealed that while only 22.4% of the participants worked at quarantine centers designated to take care of infected/suspected cases of COVID-19, but a huge number of them (77.6%) got in direct contact with infected people. Variant levels of anxiety were reported by participants with 35.4% of them having mild, 23.6 % moderate and 13.4 % severe levels of anxiety while 27.6% did not manifest anxiety.
Factors contributed to the level of anxiety include having a family member diagnosed with COVID-19, a family member died with COVID-19 and getting in direct contact with people infected/ suspected to have COVID-19.
Conclusions and implications for practice: The high level of exposure to contamination of Corona virus represent risk factor of nurse's fear and anxiety through their contact with patients, friends, relatives and family members. Psycho-social support programs as setting channels of one-to-one online or phone counseling for nurses may be effective to alleviate negative psychological effects and to enhance the mental health of nurses.
Background: Healthcare providers are engaged in providing patient care and may expose to COVID-19 during their work, Understanding the psychological impact of the COVID-19 among health care providers is important in facing the pandemic. Objective: We examined the psychological distress, depression, anxiety, and stress among healthcare providers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Gaza Strip. Methods: The descriptive design was used, 231 health care providers for corona patients were selected purposively, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21) In addition to information on demographic characteristics was used in this study. Results: The mean weight for depression domain 68% and the mean weight for anxiety 69%, on the other hand, the mean weight for stress 67%, the study show that Mean Rank and the p-value equal 0.693, which is greater than 0.05, which means there are no significant differences between psychological distresses due to gender among healthcare providers during the Covid-19 pandemic, the study found that the p-value <0.05, which means there are significant differences between psychological distresses due to years of experience in favor of more than 12 years and type of job in favor of Nonmedical Health Care Personnel. Conclusion: Our study highlights that nonmedical health care personnel are at the highest risk for psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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