TDNet Discover

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic disturbed the entire world, leaving many healthcare workers, specifically physicians and nurses extremely vulnerable. Working hard and endless, they are impacted in many ways including the state of their mental health. It is important to explore the effects this pandemic has had on healthcare workers’ mental health for their own safety and for the safety of their patients. Objectives: To conduct a review of existing literature pertaining to the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has on healthcare workers, specifically physicians and nurses, regarding mental health effects such as anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, etc. Methods: A systematic review of the literature involving the mental health impacts was performed by searching available abstracts across three databases including PubMed, Psychology Database, and MEDLINE. Nine articles were selected in total after reviewing the full text, committing to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and agreeing among the three researchers. These nine articles were analyzed for its data using a data extraction tool by KP and then assessed for its quality using a quality assessment tool by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Results: The nine articles detailed information about varying mental health symptoms as an effect the Covid-19 pandemic had on healthcare workers. Overall, the mental health outcomes most studied were anxiety, depression, sleep patterns, and stress. The articles utilized several different tools to measure these outcomes. Additionally, the articles discussed several different factors that could aid in the role of how the pandemic affected these healthcare workers. In general, the rates of the mental health outcomes increased among healthcare workers across the world. v Conclusion: The nine studies found that most demographic factors did not usually provide statistically significant data for the mental health outcomes. However, unprotected exposure to Covid-19 patients was directly correlated to work-related stress in HCWs. Furthermore, in general, the incidence of mental health effects increased overall with the pandemic among the physicians and nurses in the included studies. The data, though, is changing daily as the pandemic is changing daily. Understanding this data and keeping it current is important because it can help researchers create solutions for similar situations in the future as these outcomes affect the healthcare workers and can ultimately affect patient care.