Psychosocial Impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare Workers

Abstract

 COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted frontline workers over the past year. It is
essential to evaluate the psychosocial impact of this pandemic on Healthcare workers to
minimize the negative impacts of this pandemic as well as potential pandemics in the future in
this group. Many of these individuals have been experiencing high levels of stress and symptoms
of both anxiety and depression. This is exceptionally worrisome as if left untreated, can lead to
long-term mental health problems.
Since December 2019, many people have been infected with the coronavirus around the world.
Today, there are more than140millionconfirmed cases of coronavirus globally, with more than
three million deaths as a result of this disease (COVID-19 situation update worldwide, 2020). In
many ways, this virus has caused fear, stress, anxiety, and adverse psychosocial impacts. The
National Health Commission of China has released multiple reports about the mental health
crisis related to coronavirus and its negative emotional, psychological, and social impacts on the
medical workers (Kang et al., 2020). According to a recent article by Lai et al., there is a great  concern on social and mental pressures on healthcare professionals during an outbreak. Other
recent study suggested that compare to the general population, healthcare workers were more
likely to experience the burden of depression, mainly because of fear of getting infected and
passing it on to their family members and loved ones, lack of personal protective equipment, and
working too many hours during the COVID19 pandemic (Krishnamoorthy et al., 2020).Previous
reports have shown that in similar events in the past such as sever acute respiratory
syndrome(SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreaks, healthcare
professionals experienced a great level of anxiety, fear, mental pressure, and symptoms of
depression even after control of the outbreak. Moreover, recent data have shown the most
underestimated problem during this pandemic is every day increase of workload on healthcare
professionals which can be triggered to developing anxiety and psychiatric disorders (DelgadoGallegos et al., 2020). In a study by Wang et al., during the initial phase of an outbreak across
China, more than half of participants reported as experiencing a moderate to severe
psychological impact and with over a third of them showed signs of moderate to severe anxiety.
At this time, the main focus of public health departments and the World Health Organization is
on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect our healthcare workers from exposure.
Therefore, further research is necessary to study the pandemic's holistic impacts and look into
ways to promote mental wellbeing among healthcare workers. The objective of our study is to
evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers at Hurley Medical Center and identify
individuals at highest risk to establish preventative interventions to ameliorate the negative
impact of similar events on the vulnerable population in the future.