Download This Paper
Preprints with The Lancet is a collaboration between The Lancet Group of journals and SSRN to facilitate the open sharing of preprints for early engagement, community comment, and collaboration. Preprints available here are not Lancet publications or necessarily under review with a Lancet journal. These preprints are early-stage research papers that have not been peer-reviewed. The usual SSRN checks and a Lancet-specific check for appropriateness and transparency have been applied. The findings should not be used for clinical or public health decision-making or presented without highlighting these facts. For more information, please see the FAQs.
The Psychological Impact of COVID-19 on Medical Care Workers in China
24 Pages Posted: 8 Jun 2020
More...Abstract
Background: Medical care workers experienced unprecedented levels of workload and pressure since the outbreak of COVID-19 started from the end of 2019. Little is known about its exact impact on medical care workers and related factors in China.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 863 medical care workers from 7 provinces in China using standard questionnaires measuring adverse psychological outcomes including Impact of Event Scale-6 (IES-6), Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale(DASS)and related psychosocial factors like perceived threat, social support and coping strategies. Exploratory Factor analysis was performed to identify the dimensions of perceived threat by study participants. Multivariate regression was used to examine the determinants of adverse psychological outcomes.
Findings: Posttraumatic stress (PTS) were prevalent in this sample of health care professionals, and 40·21% indicated positive screens for significant posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The proportion of having mild to extremely severe symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress were 13·56%, 13·90% and 8·57%, respectively. Perceived threat and passive coping strategies were positively correlated to PTS and DASS scores, while perceived social support and active coping strategies were negatively correlated to DASS scores. Nurses were more likely to be anxious than others among medical care workers during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Interpretation: Adverse psychological symptoms were prevalent among medical care workers in China during the COVID-19 epidemic. Screening for adverse psychological outcomes and developing corresponding preventive measures would be beneficial in decreasing negative psychological outcomes.
Funding Statement: Asian Regional Special Cooperation Fund of National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China and the Innovative Engineering Program on global health policy sponsored by Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (2017-I2M-B&R-17).
Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethics Approval Statement: This study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of Jining Medical University of Shandong province on February 12th, 2020 (approval number: JNMC-2020-KY-001).
Keywords: COVID-19; medical care workers; China; psychological; PTSD; depression; anxiety; stress
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation