The presence of COVID-19 has had psychological consequences among health personnel; these include fear, anxiety, and depression. In the current study, we used the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) to assess the response to fear within health staff in Mexico. This was a cross-sectional survey study in which we administered the Spanish version of the FCV-19S to hospital staff. The FCV-19S is a seven-item questionnaire that assesses the severity of fear caused by COVID-19. A total of 2860 participants—1641 female and 1218 male personnel from three hospitals—were included in the study. The internal reliability of the scale was good, with Cronbach’s alpha of .902. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on the seven items of the FCV-19S, showing good model fit ( χ 2 (7) = 29.40, p < .001; CFI = .99; TLI = .99; RMSEA = .03; SRMR = .010; AIC = 71.40). We found a global FCV-19S mean score of 19.3 ± 6.9, with a significant difference in scores between women and men. Our survey shows a significantly higher level of fear in nursing and administrative personnel, which may be explained by the nursing staff being in close contact with infected patients and the administrative staff lacking understanding of the possible implications of the infection, compared with nonclinical hospital personnel. Our results are consistent with those of other researchers. We must remember that fear is a reaction and that we must be courageous enough to trust validated infection prevention practices to provide the highest standard of care, in the safest environment that we can, for as long as we can.

Burnout syndrome is a psychological condition that commonly affects health professionals, medical students, and others in professions with long shifts. It is defined by a high amount of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal job satisfaction. We aimed to determine the prevalence of burnout syndrome in medical interns and establish the relationships between this condition and the time and type of hospital at which students worked during their medical internship. This was a survey study in which we used the Maslach Burnout Inventory, applied to fifth-year medical students on an internship at private and public hospitals in Mexico. The participants were 96 women (54.5%) and 80 men (45.5%), with ages ranging from 21 to 34 years old. We found burnout syndrome in 20% of these medical students 22% of the women and 18.6% of the men in the sample. Second-semester interns suffered burnout at a rate of 29%, in contrast to 15% of first-semester students. Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization scores were higher in second-semester interns who worked in public hospitals. However, the prevalence did not differ between public and private hospitals. Our study reports a higher prevalence of burnout syndrome during the second semester of internship. Students who practiced their internship in a public hospital showed higher scores in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization than those who practiced in a private hospital.

Purpose of Review As of 13 September 2020, almost 28 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 including more than 920,000 deaths have been reported to the World Health Organization. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic represents a potential threat to patients and healthcare systems worldwide. Patients with the worst outcomes and higher mortality are reported to include older adults, polymorbid individuals, and malnourished people in general. The purpose of this review is to provide concise guidance for the nutritional management of individuals with COVID-19 based on the current literature and focused on those in the non-ICU setting or with an older age and polymorbidity, which are independently associated with malnutrition and its negative impact on mortality. Recent Findings Prolonged hospital stays are reported to be required for individuals with COVID-19, and longer acute setting stays may directly worsen or cause malnutrition, with severe loss of skeletal muscle mass and function, which may lead to poor quality of life and additional morbidity. Nutritional therapy is among the mainstay of therapeutic principles and one of the core contents of comprehensive treatment measures. Summary The current COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. The prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of malnutrition should therefore be routinely included in the management of individuals with COVID-19.

The world is social distancing and compulsory confinement has caused stress, psychological instability, stigmatization, fear, and discrimination in the general population. In this cross-sectional survey study, we administered the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) to hospital medical and nonmedical personnel. A total of 1,216 participants were included in the study. We found that the global FCV-19S mean score was 16.4 ± 6.1, with a significant difference between women and men’s scores. Medical students presented higher scores than experienced medical personnel. As the medical and nursing personnel scored higher on the FCV-19S than the nonmedical hospital staff, our findings suggest that greater knowledge of medicine or infectious diseases could decrease the overall psychological impact of the pandemic disease.

This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .