Development and Initial Psychometric Validation of the COVID-19 Pandemic Burden Index for Healthcare Workers

Abstract

Background The burden of COVID-19 on healthcare workers (HCWs) is reported to be increasing, yet the psychometric scales now in use evaluate only single aspects; few measure the pandemic-specific burden on HCWs comprehensively. Objective To develop a scale to quantify the physical, mental, and socioeconomic burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on HCWs. Design Scale development and cross-sectional survey. Participants Consenting HCWs aged ≥20. Main Measures Development of an item-list based on literature reviews and HCW panel input, evaluation of content validity and item selection using the Delphi method, psychometric testing conducted on HCWs, validity assessment by factor analyses and hypothesis verification, internal consistency evaluation by Cronbach’s alpha, test-retest analysis, and interpretability assessment. Key Results Through the Delphi process, a 29-item pilot scale was generated. In psychometric testing, data from 863 HCWs contributed to the development of the final version of this scale, called Pandemic Burden Index twenty for HCWs (PBI-20), a 20-item scale to measure six domains: fatigue, fear of infection, inadequacy as a medical professional, mental health concerns, prejudice or discrimination, and anxiety about one’s livelihood and daily life. Factor analysis showed each factor corresponded to the six domains of this scale. Hypothesis verification showed the PBI-20 total score to be moderately to highly correlated with the Short Form 36 vitality score and mental health score and with intention of turnover. The PBI-20 had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha 0.92). Test-retest analysis showed the intraclass correlation coefficient to be 0.70 and the minimal important change to be −7.0. Conclusions The psychometrically sound questionnaire we developed to measure pandemic-specific burdens for HCWs provides an understanding of comprehensive burdens on HCWs and may serve to evaluate interventions to reduce the burdens. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11606-023-08028-3.

The QDIS-7: one scale for measuring the disease-specific quality-of-life impact of different medical conditions

“…Furthermore, de novo development and testing of patient-reported outcome measures can be very time-consuming and resource-intensive. In the presence of new and emerging medical conditions, new disease-specific QOL instruments suddenly become needed, as occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic (26, 35). In such situations, the QDIS-7 could be adapted to meet those new needs quickly and easily.…”

“…Specifically, in addition to measuring the impact of diseases, the QDIS-7 can also measure the impact of symptoms (headache and low-back pain in the present study), treatments (21,22), exposures (23,24), and any other specifiable (25) status or condition that might affect regular daily physical, psychological, or social functioning. Applications of the QDIS-7 may include QOL associated with environmental pollution, healthcare workers' QOL, maternal postpartum QOL, and caregivers' QOL, (23,24,(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34). None of those examples is a disease, but the QDIS-7 can be used to quantify the specific impact of each one on QOL, using the same metric as for asthma, diabetes, etc.…”

Relationship between pandemic fatigue and work motivation in graduate students from a state university in Peru

“…Aunque algunas están progresivamente volviendo a las operaciones presenciales, la adaptación a esta nueva realidad es un proceso en curso. Paralelamente, el ámbito educativo a nivel universitario también ha experimentado transformaciones similares (Yamamoto et al, 2023;Huarcaya-Victoria et al, 2022).…”