COVID-19: Nonmedical Healthcare Personnel at Highest Psychological Distress Risk

In Singapore, nonmedical healthcare personnel who were caring for patients with COVID-19 are at an increased risk for psychological distress related to the pandemic. A brief research report is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Researchers from National University Health System and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore used a self-administered questionnaire to examine the psychological distress, depression, anxiety, and stress experienced by health care workers in Singapore in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak and compared these outcomes between medically and non-medically trained hospital personnel.

‘Medically trained workers scored significantly lower on measures of depression and anxiety and impact of COVID-19 outbreak.’

Nonmedical health care workers had higher prevalence of anxiety even after adjustment for possible confounders.

These findings are consistent with those of a recent COVID-19 study demonstrating that frontline nurses had significantly lower vicarious traumatization scores than non-frontline nurses and the general public.

Reasons for this may include reduced accessibility to formal psychological support, less first-hand medical information on the outbreak, less intensive training on personal protective equipment and infection control measures.

Source: Eurekalert