Stress and Resilience in Health Care Workers Managing Corona Virus Disease- 2019 Patients in A dedicated COVID-19 Hospital in Mewat region of North India

Abstract

Objective: Pandemics are known to impact the mental health of the health care workers (HCWs). Impact of COVID-19 on mental health of HCWs is not yet understood completely. We studied stress and resilience among HCWs during the COVID-19pandemic, and observedlevel of stress and resilience among different job profile of HCWsin North India. Methods: We conducted a hospital based cross sectional study at a designated COVID-19 tertiary care center in rural district of North India from April 2020 to June 2020. A total of 587 HCWs were included for study. The information was collected using Semi-structured proforma and pre-validated questionnaire, Perceived stress scale (PSS) for perceived stress and Brief resilient coping scale (BRCS24) for resilience. The statistical analysis was done using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS), version 24. Results: Maximum number of participants (72.2%) reported with moderate to high level of perceived stress. 76.5% specialists were reported moderate stress followed by paramedical staff (65.7%) and junior residents (63.9%). Around 70% of junior residents have high resilient coping skills followed by specialists (53.7%) and paramedical medical staff (51.8%).Significant difference (p value = <0.000) between the PSS score and BRCS scores were found among all three job categories. No correlation was found between PSS and BRCS (p value >0.05). Conclusions: Our study indicated highest level of perceived stressandresiliencein junior residents among all the three job categories, however no relationship could be observed between perceived stress and resilience in HCWs. Higher age, female gender, specialist and COVID care duty inICU, isolation, flu OPD, triage were predictors of perceived stress. These findings should be taken into consideration for the development and implementation of interventions to mitigate the impact of sustained psychological distress among HCWs.