Impact of COVID-19 on the Anxiety Perceived by Healthcare Professionals: Differences between Primary Care and Hospital Care

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an emotional impact on healthcare professionals at different levels of care, and it is important to understand the levels of anxiety of hospital personnel (HP) compared to those of primary care personnel (PCP). The objectives herein were to assess the differences in anxiety levels between these populations and to detect factors that may influence them. The anxiety levels (measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) scale) of the HP and PCP groups were compared using data collected from a cross-sectional study. The secondary variables included demographic and health data, confinement factors, contact with COVID-19 patients, having suffered from COVID-19, perceptions of protection, caregiver overload, threat, and satisfaction with management. We found anxiety “case” (35.6%) and “at-risk” (21%), with statistically significant differences in the group “at risk”, and higher scores in the PCP group. The factors associated with the perception of threat and protection were significant determinants of an increase in anxiety, with all of them showing statistically significant differences. There were greater symptoms of anxiety in the PCP group than the HP group (32% vs. 18%). The factors associated with the prevalence of anxiety symptoms were the perceptions of threat, protection, management, caregiver overload, and perceived degree of threat associated with COVID-19.

The Role of Healthcare Professionals’ Passion in Predicting Secondary Traumatic Stress and Posttraumatic Growth in the Face of COVID-19: A Longitudinal Approach

“…All in all, health institutions may boost these perceptions and facilitate its integration, for example, through reinforcing the possibility to have more free days and giving psychoeducational workshops about (a) the psychosocial risks and the stressors associated with their development, (b) how to identify stressors to individually apply strategies to overcome them and (c) remarking on the importance of recovery time, providing strategies for disengaging from work and enhancing the need to pursue personal values. These intervention measures may be a way to reduce healthcare professionals’ vulnerability, which is undeniably relevant in this crisis time [ 4 , 14 ].…”

“…Undoubtedly, the current crisis of the COVID-19 disease pandemic has strongly impacted on the general population, being declared as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) [ 1 ]. However, this impact has been noticeably harder when it comes to healthcare professionals on the front line [ 2 ] from different health institutions, such as hospitals [ 3 ], health centers [ 4 ], and nursing homes [ 5 ]. Previous studies of the first wave of the pandemic have considered these three institutions to have high vulnerability due to exposure to death and high rates of infected patients [ 3 , 5 ].…”

“…These critical rates linked to the face of the pandemic on the frontline are linked to an increase in their job demands that have involved a new challenge for the health systems and exacerbated the occupational hazards that previously existed [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 12 ]. Specifically, these job demands are the substantial increase in their workload during their working times [ 13 , 14 ], linked to the fear of contagion [ 4 , 15 ], as they are a high-risk population for being infected. In this regard, these specific job demands related to COVID-19 and widely studied during the first wave of the pandemic (April 2020) have been associated with negative outcomes such as STS [ 16 ], defined as the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized patient [ 17 ].…”

Hopelessness and Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms among Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Any Role for Mediating Variables?

“…Due to the significant increase in working hours and number of COVID-19 patients who need to be assisted, the stressful clinical practice of frontline healthcare workers could have determined frustration, feelings of lower competence, and low-self-esteem directly related to the growing number of deaths during the current pandemic. Furthermore, job insecurity and inadequate personal equipment, long periods of isolation, uncertainty about the future, pre-existing psychological problems, an increase of perceived stress and threats, emotional and physical exhaustion, exposure to patient deaths, caregiver overload, and perceived degrees of threats associated with COVID-19 are considered as significant determinant factors of increased general psychopathology [11,14,25,27,29,30]. Lastly, persistent fear of infection and consequently an increased anxiety related to death, associated with other psychiatric clinical dimensions, as identified in existing studies [10,46], could occur in this population.…”

“…The real traumatic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is quite unknown as it has been investigated only in terms of acute post-traumatic stress manifestations [23]. Several systematic reviews and clinical studies have evaluated post-traumatic stress symptoms in frontline healthcare workers, investigating clinical predictors, risk factors, and psychiatric manifestations [11,14,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. However, to our knowledge, no studies have reported a potential mediator between hopelessness and post-traumatic stress symptoms.…”