Considering medical and economic burden of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a high COVID-19 vaccination coverage among healthcare workers (HCWs) is an urgent need. The aim of this systematic ...review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the intention of HCWs to accept COVID-19 vaccination and to identify related factors. We searched PubMed, MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, CINAHL and medRxiv until July 14, 2021. The heterogeneity between results was very high; thus, we applied a random effects model to estimate pooled effects. We performed subgroup and meta-regression analysis to identify possible resources of heterogeneity. Twenty four studies, including 50 940 HCWs, met the inclusion criteria. The overall proportion of HCWs that intend to accept COVID-19 vaccination was 63.5% (95% confidence interval: 56.5%-70.2%) with a wide range among studies from 27.7% to 90.1%. The following factors were associated with increased HCWs' willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19: male gender, older age, white HCWs, physician profession, higher education level, comorbidity among HCWs, vaccination against flu during previous season, stronger vaccine confidence, positive attitude towards a COVID-19 vaccine, fear about COVID-19, individual perceived risk about COVID-19, and contact with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients. The reluctance of HCWs to vaccinate against COVID-19 could diminish the trust of individuals and trigger a ripple effect in the general public. Since vaccination is a complex behavior, understanding the way that HCWs take the decision to accept or refuse COVID-19 vaccination will give us the opportunity to develop the appropriate interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccination uptake.
In this study, we investigated the perception of risk and the worries about COVID-19 infection in both healthcare workers and the general population in Italy. We studied the difference in risk ...perception in these two groups and how this related to demographic variables and psychological factors such as stress, anxiety, and death anxiety. To this aim, we administered an online questionnaire about COVID-19 together with other questionnaires assessing the psychological condition of participants. First, we found that the exposition to infection risk, due to living area or job, increased the perceived stress and anxiety (i.e., medical staff in North Italy was more stressed and anxious with respect to both medical- and non-medical participants from Center and South Italy). Then, we conducted hierarchical logistic regression models on our data to assess the response odds ratio relatively to each regressor on each dependent variable. We found that health workers reported higher risk perception, level of worry, and knowledge as related to COVID-19 infection compared to the general population. Psychological state, sex, and living area were less related to these factors. Instead, judgments about behaviors and containment rules were more linked to demographics, such as sex. We discussed these results in the light of risk factors for psychological distress and possible interventions to meet the psychological needs of healthcare workers.
Coping with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a significant risk factor for the psychological distress of health workers. Hence, this study explores the relationship between coping strategies ...used by healthcare and emergency workers in Italy to manage the stress factors related to the COVID-19 emergency, which may result in the risk of developing secondary trauma. We study differences between healthcare (
= 121) and emergency workers (
= 89) in terms of their coping strategies, emergency stress, and secondary trauma, as well as the relationships of these differences to demographic variables and other stress factors (Instructions and Equipment). For this purpose, we collected data from participants through the following questionnaires online:
,
, an original questionnaire on stressors, and the
(to assess organizational-relational, physical, decisional inefficacy, emotional, cognitive, and COVID-19 stress). We performed a
-test, correlational analysis, and hierarchical regression. The analyses reveal that compared with the emergency worker group, the health worker group has greater levels of emergency stress and arousal and is more willing to use problem-focused coping. Healthcare workers involved in the treatment of COVID-19 are exposed to a large degree of stress and could experience secondary trauma; hence, it is essential to plan prevention strategies for future pandemic situations. Moreover, individual efficacy in stopping negative emotions and thoughts could be a protective strategy against stress and secondary trauma.
This paper used meta-regression to analyze the heterogenous factors contributing to the prevalence rate of mental health symptoms of the general and frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) in China under ...the COVID-19 crisis.
We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Medrxiv and pooled data using random-effects meta-analyses to estimate the prevalence rates, and ran meta-regression to tease out the key sources of the heterogeneity.
The meta-regression results uncovered several predictors of the heterogeneity in prevalence rates among published studies, including severity (e.g., above severe vs. above moderate,
< 0.01; above moderate vs. above mild,
< 0.01), type of mental symptoms (PTSD vs. anxiety,
= 0.04), population (frontline vs. general HCWs,
< 0.01), sampling location (Wuhan vs. Non-Wuhan,
= 0.04), and study quality (
= 0.04).
The meta-regression findings provide evidence on the factors contributing to the prevalence rate of mental health symptoms of the general and frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) to guide future research and evidence-based medicine in several specific directions.
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=220592, identifier: CRD42020220592.
We report a case of occupational monkeypox virus infection from a needlestick injury in a healthcare worker in South Korea and review similar reports in the literature during 2022. Postexposure ...prophylactic treatment with a third-generation smallpox vaccine and antiviral agent tecovirimat inhibited local virus spread and alleviated lesion pain.
This study sought to determine the perception of healthcare workers (HCWs) about pre-hospital airway management and their experiences. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among health ...workers at the emergency department of King Fahad Medical City in the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh City. This study targeted physicians, nurses, paramedics, and respiratory therapists. Data were collected using an online questionnaire. The questionnaire included demographic characteristics, training, and experiences in airway management and a 5-item questionnaire to measure the perception of HCWs about airway management. Results: Of the 100 HCWs, 39% were doctors, and 37% were nurses. Approximately 23% had a poor experience with intubation. Traumatic injuries were the major difficulties involving airway management (44%). The overall perception of HCWs about prehospital airway management was good (68%), 31% were moderate, and only 1% were considered poor perception levels. No significant differences were observed between perception scores in relation to the demographic characteristics and experiences of HCWs in airway management (all p>0.05). Conclusion: Despite HCWs' good perception of prehospital airway management, some gaps have been identified mainly through intubation skills and experiences. This study provided evidence that perception towards prehospital airway management was not affected by profession, years of experience, regular practice of intubation, and airway management. Regular training should be implemented, with equipment and resources should be available to improve airway management and patient quality of care. SJEMed 2024; 5(2.000): 128-133
Influenza infection is a highly contagious viral disease. It may cause several nosocomial outbreaks. This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of healthcare workers (HCWs) about ...influenza vaccination and to identify factors associated with the uptake of influenza vaccination.
We conducted a cross-sectional study over 5 months between November 2021 and March 2022. Data was collected using an anonymous self-administered questionnaire. We included all HCWs at Taher Sfar University Hospital who were willing to participate in the study.
A total of 395 HCWs were included. They were mainly women (78.7%) with an average age of 27 years. The medical personnel was the largest group (67.8%). Most respondents considered the vaccination to be optional and knew that it should be renewed every year, but 97.5% of them judged the efficacy of the vaccine to be low. The influenza vaccination uptake was only 20.2%. The main reasons for accepting vaccination were to protect patients and families. However, misconceptions about the severity and the risk of influenza and the belief that barrier measures were sufficient to prevent infection were the main causes of avoiding vaccination. The factors associated with adherence to vaccination were being a medical professional, old age, longer professional experience, and considering vaccination to be mandatory for HCWs.
Our study showed a low adherence to influenza vaccination with misconceptions about vaccine efficacy and safety. More efforts are needed to improve the knowledge of HCW about the vaccine and boost the adherence rates.
•Influenza vaccine uptake remains low among healthcare professionals.•Misconceptions are the leading cause of vaccination refusal.•Mandatory influenza vaccination among health care workers may improve the vaccine uptake.
Background:
The coronavirus pneumonia is still spreading around the world. Much progress has been made in vaccine development, and vaccination will become an inevitable trend in the fight against ...this pandemic. However, the public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination still remains uncertain.
Methods:
An anonymous questionnaire was used in Wen Juan Xing survey platform. All the respondents were divided into healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were performed to identify the key sociodemographic, cognitive, and attitude associations among the samples of healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers.
Results:
A total of 2,580 respondents completed the questionnaire, including 1,329 healthcare workers and 1,251 non-healthcare workers. This study showed that 76.98% of healthcare workers accepted the COVID-19 vaccine, 18.28% workers were hesitant, and 4.74% workers were resistant. Among the non-healthcare workers, 56.19% workers received the COVID-19 vaccine, 37.57% workers were hesitant, and 6.24% workers were resistant. Among the healthcare workers, compared with vaccine recipients, vaccine-hesitant individuals were more likely to be female (AOR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.12–2.07); vaccine-resistant individuals were more likely to live in the suburbs (AOR = 2.81, 95% CI: 1.44–3.99) with an income of 10,000 RMB or greater (AOR = 2.00, 95% CI: 1.03–3.90). Among the non-healthcare workers, vaccine-hesitant individuals were more likely to be female (AOR = 1.66, 95% CI: 1.31–2.11); vaccine-resistant individuals were also more likely to be female (AOR = 1.87, 95% CI: 1.16–3.02) and older than 65 years (AOR = 4.96, 95% CI: 1.40–7.62). There are great differences between healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers in their cognition and attitude toward vaccines.
Conclusions:
Our study shows that healthcare workers are more willing to be vaccinated than non-healthcare workers. Current vaccine safety issues continue to be a major factor affecting public acceptance, and to expand vaccine coverage in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, appropriate vaccination strategies and immunization programs are essential, especially for non-healthcare workers.
Long-COVID is a syndrome persisting 12+ weeks after COVID-19 infection, impacting life and work ability. Autonomic nervous system imbalance has been hypothesised as the cause. This study aims to ...investigate cardiovascular autonomic function in health care workers (HCWs) with Long-COVID and the effectiveness of slow paced breathing SPB on autonomic modulation.
From 1st December 2022 to 31th March 2023, 6655 HCWs of the University Hospitals of Trieste (Northeast Italy) were asked to participate the study by company-email. Inclusion/exclusion criteria were assessed. Global health status and psychosomatic disorders were evaluated through validated questionnaires. Heart rate variability was assessed by finger-photoplethysmography during spontaneous breathing (SB) and SPB, which stimulate vagal response. Long-COVID-HCWs (G1) were contrasted with never infected (G2) and fully recovered COVID-19 workers (G3).
126 HCWs were evaluated. The. 58 Long-COVID were assessed at a median time since COVID-19 of 419.5 days (IQR 269-730) and had significantly more psychosomatic symptoms and lower detectability of spontaneous systolic pressure oscillation at 0.1 Hz (Mayer wave - baroreflex arc) during SB compared to 53 never-infected and 14 fully-recovered HCWs (19%, 42% and 40%, respectively, p=0.027). During SPB, the increase in this parameter was close to controls (91.2%, 100% and 100%, respectively, p=0.09). No other differences in HRV parameters were found among groups.
Resting vascular modulation was reduced in Long-COVID, while during SPB baroreflex sensitivity effectively improved. Long-term studies are needed to evaluate whether multiple sessions of breathing exercises can restore basal vascular reactivity and reduce cardiovascular risk in these patients.
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