Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T06:07:53.621Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Study of mental health of medical staff in a specialized hospital for COVID-19 in Novi Sad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

D. Kuljancic*
Affiliation:
University of Novi Sad Medical faculty, Psichiatry, Novi Sad, Serbia

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Introduction

The highly infectious novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019 and soon became a global pandemic. COVID-19 is escalating medical staff psychological stress and creating an increasingly heavy professional burden. Fear of transmitting the virus to family, community perception of frontline workers as potential disease carriers, extreme workloads and moral dilemmas add additional stressors. In Novi Sad Clinical Centre of Vojvodina (CCV) for the past 2 years there has been a continuous struggle against the COVID-19 crisis. Both senior specialist doctors and newly hired young doctors, some without work experience, were hired immediately after completing their studies.

Objectives

To investigate the mental health of clinical first-line medical staff in COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional study involving CCV staff who worked in the first line of patient treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were given a self-administered questionnaire which included information on demographic and socio-economic characteristics and the validated Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21) and the Impact of Events Scale–Revised (IES-R) instrument. A total of 190 medical workers were involved.

Results

Sixty-two (32,6%) participants screened positive for anxiety, 38 (20%) for depression, 68 (35,8%) for stress, and 22 (11,5%) for clinical concern of PTSD. The most endangered are young nurses and doctors with less than 6 months of previous work experience.

Conclusions

In conclusion, our results suggest frontline medical staff involved in treatment of COVID-19 patients should be closely monitored as a high-risk group for depression and anxiety, and given proper training before deployment.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Type
Abstract
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.