London: Nurses and female health care workers are most at risk of experiencing psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new research.
The study, carried out by the University of Sheffield in the UK, is the largest global review of factors associated with distress amongst health care workers during an infectious disease outbreak, including COVID-19, SARS, bird flu, swine flu and Ebola.
Researchers assessed fixed factors such as demographic characteristics, age, sex and occupation as well as social psychological and infection-related factors in more than 143,000 health care workers from around the world. The review of 139 studies included data collected between 2000 and November 2020.
Consistent evidence indicated that being female, a nurse, experiencing stigma and having contact or risk of contact with infected patients were the biggest risk factors for psychological distress among health care workers,” Dr Fuschia Sirois, Reader in Social and…