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Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 outbreak imposed an overwhelming workload as well as emotional burdens on Healthcare workers (HCWs). In May 2020, an online survey was administered to HCWs in Italy to assess the pandemic's psychological impact and to investigate possible predictive factors that led to...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977468/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35386527 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.818674 |
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author | Pisanu, Elisabetta Di Benedetto, Annalisa Infurna, Maria Rita Rumiati, Raffaella I. |
author_facet | Pisanu, Elisabetta Di Benedetto, Annalisa Infurna, Maria Rita Rumiati, Raffaella I. |
author_sort | Pisanu, Elisabetta |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 outbreak imposed an overwhelming workload as well as emotional burdens on Healthcare workers (HCWs). In May 2020, an online survey was administered to HCWs in Italy to assess the pandemic's psychological impact and to investigate possible predictive factors that led to individual differences. METHODS: The psychological experience was measured based on the prevalence of self-reported feelings during the pandemic, including negative and positive emotional states. We analyzed the relationship between factors of gender, age, geographic region, professional role, and operational unit, and the four-point scale used to rate the frequency of each emotional state experienced by performing several multinomial logistic regressions, one for each emotion. RESULTS: Our findings suggest that more than half of HCWs experienced psychological distress during the first COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Female and younger respondents, especially those operating in northern Italy experienced more frequently negative emotional states such as irritability, anxiety, loneliness, and insecurity. However, positive feelings, first of all solidarity, were also reported especially by female and older workers. The majority of the negative as well as positive emotional states were experienced almost equally by both doctors and nurses, and independently of the operational unit in which they operated. CONCLUSIONS: This study can be very useful as a contribution to the current literature on the psychological effects of this pandemic on health workers. Moreover, our findings can provide useful information in planning more tailored psychological interventions to support this category of workers in the ongoing and future emergencies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8977468 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-89774682022-04-05 Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave Pisanu, Elisabetta Di Benedetto, Annalisa Infurna, Maria Rita Rumiati, Raffaella I. Front Psychiatry Psychiatry BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 outbreak imposed an overwhelming workload as well as emotional burdens on Healthcare workers (HCWs). In May 2020, an online survey was administered to HCWs in Italy to assess the pandemic's psychological impact and to investigate possible predictive factors that led to individual differences. METHODS: The psychological experience was measured based on the prevalence of self-reported feelings during the pandemic, including negative and positive emotional states. We analyzed the relationship between factors of gender, age, geographic region, professional role, and operational unit, and the four-point scale used to rate the frequency of each emotional state experienced by performing several multinomial logistic regressions, one for each emotion. RESULTS: Our findings suggest that more than half of HCWs experienced psychological distress during the first COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Female and younger respondents, especially those operating in northern Italy experienced more frequently negative emotional states such as irritability, anxiety, loneliness, and insecurity. However, positive feelings, first of all solidarity, were also reported especially by female and older workers. The majority of the negative as well as positive emotional states were experienced almost equally by both doctors and nurses, and independently of the operational unit in which they operated. CONCLUSIONS: This study can be very useful as a contribution to the current literature on the psychological effects of this pandemic on health workers. Moreover, our findings can provide useful information in planning more tailored psychological interventions to support this category of workers in the ongoing and future emergencies. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8977468/ /pubmed/35386527 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.818674 Text en Copyright © 2022 Pisanu, Di Benedetto, Infurna and Rumiati. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychiatry Pisanu, Elisabetta Di Benedetto, Annalisa Infurna, Maria Rita Rumiati, Raffaella I. Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave |
title | Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave |
title_full | Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave |
title_fullStr | Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave |
title_full_unstemmed | Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave |
title_short | Psychological Impact in Healthcare Workers During Emergencies: The Italian Experience With COVID-19 First Wave |
title_sort | psychological impact in healthcare workers during emergencies: the italian experience with covid-19 first wave |
topic | Psychiatry |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977468/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35386527 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.818674 |
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