Anxiety, health-related quality of life, and symptoms of burnout in frontline physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background : COVID-19 pandemic caused increased workload and stress for health professionals involved in the care of such patients. We aimed to describe the health-related quality of life, and burnout in frontline physicians diagnosed with anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods : This was a cross-sectional study conducted during the first-wave phase of COVID-19, from September to October 2020. Questionnaires were sent electronically to 450 physicians from State of Bahia, assessing symptoms of anxiety, health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and burnout syndrome. For the categorical variables, the Pearson's chi-square test was used and difference between means was compare using the Mann-Whitney test. was Groups with and without anxiety symptoms were compared using prevalence ratios (PR). Pearson's correlation measured the correlation between WHOQOL-BREF and MBI (Maslach Burnout Inventory) domains. The Fisher r-to-z transformation was used to assess the significance of the difference between two correlation coefficients. The significance level was <0.05. Results : Out of the 450 physicians, 223 (49,6%) completely answered the questionnaire and 38 (17%) showed symptoms of anxiety. Physicians with anxiety had higher scores in emotional exhaustion (EE) (38.31 ± 8.59 vs 25.31±0.87; p=0.0001) and depersonalization (DP) (9.0 ± 5.6 vs 5.9 ± 5.3; p=0.001) domains, and lower scores in personal accomplishment (PA) (32.1 ± 8.2 vs 36.3 ± 7.6; p=0.004), than those without anxiety. All correlations between WHOQOL-BREF domains and MBI in physicians without anxiety were significant (p = 0.01). Conclusion : Physicians with anxiety showed more emotional exhaustion, less personal accomplishment, and lower quality of life. All domains of WHOQOL BREF were correlated with all MBI domains among physicians without anxiety. Differences in correlation according to anxiety were remarkable in psychological HOQOL BREF domain and emotional exhaustion and depersonalization MBI domains. The effect of anxiety leading to poorer levels of perceived health needs to be further investigated.

Physicians’ Health-Related Quality of Life and Its Associated Factors During COVID-19 Pandemic in Jordan: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Many recent studies targeted exploring distress affecting physicians and other healthcare professionals during COVID-19 (Alanazi et al, 2021; Dehon et al, 2021; Froessl & Abdeen, 2021). Very few articles specifically evaluated physicians’ level of quality of life using standardized quality of life outcome measures (Chalhub et al, 2021; Ungureanu et al, 2020). However, this current study is unique as it has evaluated the level of HRQoL among physicians in COVID-19 and many of its potential influencing factors using a comprehensive set of standardized assessments better than similar recent studies.…”

Symptoms of Burnout Syndrome among Physicians during the Outbreak of COVID-19 Pandemic—A Systematic Literature Review

“…Symptoms of moderate-to-severe depression and anxiety have a negative impact on doctors’ quality of life, so anxious physicians have had a lower quality of life compared to the non-anxiety group [ 61 ]. There were also statistically significant differences between the average scores of the four areas: physicians’ quality of life and inadequate training related to the pandemic, physicians’ dissatisfaction with the measures of personal protective equipment in the hospital, and history of COVID-19 medical condition [ 62 ].…”

“…There were also statistically significant differences between the average scores of the four areas: physicians’ quality of life and inadequate training related to the pandemic, physicians’ dissatisfaction with the measures of personal protective equipment in the hospital, and history of COVID-19 medical condition [ 62 ]. In addition, smoking and drinking habits may be associated with poor health-related quality of life and poor mental health, with alcohol intake and stimulant use being higher in the anxiety group during the COVID- 19 pandemic [ 61 ].…”

“…Another issue concerning burnout is related to the lack of sleep, mainly for elderly physicians [ 64 ]. Additionally, sleep disturbance was significantly associated with the physician’s age [ 61 ].…”

“…Some studies identified an increase rate of consumption of pills (for stress and sleep-related problems) and an increased rate of alcohol consumption among doctors with high levels of burnout [ 44 , 60 , 61 ].…”