Job Stress among Healthcare Professionals During Current Pandemic of Covid-19

Abstract

Background: Healthcare professionals are facing critical situation being front line of defense to provide support to the patients and involved in various fields including nursing care, diagnosis, treatment and other related support therefore are at greater risk of emerging psychological agony and other mental health issues during pandemic COVID-19.

Objective: Aim of present study is to measure job stress during current pandemic of COVID-19 among healthcare professionals by using perceived stress scale questionnaire.

Methods: This descriptive study was carried out on the behalf of Department of Management Sciences, Virtual University of Pakistan. After taking an informed consent, demographic characteristics of each respondent including, age, gender, country of residence, job title and working experience etc. were noted on a predesigned questionnaire. A stress scale known to be perceived stress scale containing 10 items was used to observe the level of stress. An accumulated score of 0-13 is considered as low stress, 14-27 as moderate stress, and 28-40 is severe stress.

Results: A total of 106 healthcare professionals participated in this study. Overall Mean age of study participants was remained to be 36.83±6.65. Total mean score of 21.42±8.52 shows that most of the people had moderate severe depression. Level of stress with respect to the job nature was revealed that highest as severe stress in 68.8% of nurses. Moderate stress of 25.7% was shown doctors participated in this study. Severe stress of 18.7% was observed in healthcare professionals working abroad as compared to only 6.5% among people working in home country with a significant difference (p-value <0.05).

Conclusion: Provide Environment of communication with maintaining the social distancing in healthcare organizations. Development of a mechanism for timely identification of stress and steps to resolve the issues must be ensured.