The COVID-19 pandemic verifies the preparation of medical care in individual countries in terms of the fluent of guaranteed medical services provided to the people in need. Due to the easy spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus when in direct contact with the patients, health care workers are at an increased risk of infection. Nurses and auxiliary staff, as well as medical doctors, were most frequently infected. The prevalence of infection depends on the adopted reporting method, including the diagnostic test used to recognize the infection, the nature of the work performed, but also on the gender, knowledge, and individual behavior of employees while performing their professional duties. It ranges from 5-30% depending on the country and the occupational group, and the highest rates were recorded in the initial phase of the pandemic. A review of the literature shows the lack of a uniform, transparent system of reporting infections in health care workers, which makes a reliable assessment of the epidemiological situation in this area difficult.
Introduction:The intensive care unit is one of the places where the work of nurses is accompanied by death. Aim of the study: To indicate the most common thanatic attitudes presented by nurses working in the intensive care unit. Material and methods: The study was performed by diagnostic survey questionnaire technique. The tool was the author's own questionnaire supplemented with the Scale of Attitudes to Death, which is part of the Inventory of Attitudes to Death by J. Makselon. The study involved 108 nurses working in the intensive care unit of the University Hospital in Krakow. Results: The most commonly represented thanatic attitude in the studied population was the attitude of value (85% of respondents). Other attitudes related to death were as follows: necessity, mystery, or tragedy. Most thanatic attitudes slightly positively (0.21 ≤ r ≤ 0.3) correlate with the age of the respondents, i.e. with the increase in the age of nurses, the intensity of thanatic attitudes such as tragedy, terror, absurdity, destructiveness, centrality, and value increased. The attitude of tragedy correlated most strongly with age (p = 0.002). Conclusions: Nurses working in the intensive care unit most often showed an attitude of necessity and value regarding death. The centrality attitude did not occur in the group of respondents. The attitudes of the nurses relating to death depend on age, while the length of work in the intensive care unit and the number of experienced deaths do not affect their diversity.
(1) Background: The incidence proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers (HCWs) in Poland is not exactly known. This study aims to present secondary epidemiological data identifying the scale of the spread of novel coronavirus infection and the estimation of vaccination coverage in selected professional groups of HCWs in Poland. (2) Methods: The secondary epidemiological data included both the number of infections and infection fatality rate (IFR) in individual occupational groups, which occurred throughout the observation period (January 2021–July 2022), both in the country and in individual voivodeship (administrative area). (3) Results: The incidence proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infections among HCWs was 16.48%. The highest percentage of infected workers concerned laboratory scientists (21.62%) and paramedics (18%). The highest frequency of infections among HCWs occurred in the province of Zachodnio-Pomorskie (18.9%). Due to COVID-19, 558 healthcare workers died during the analysed period, mostly nurses (n = 236) and doctors (n = 200). The results regarding the vaccination coverage of HCWs against COVID-19 indicate the highest percentage of vaccinated were among doctors (83.63%) and the lowest among physiotherapists (38.2%). (4) Conclusions: In general, the percentage of infections was high in Poland during the pandemic (16.48%). Significant territorial differences were observed in the frequency of infections, deaths, and percentage of vaccinated workers in individual voivodeships.
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