Psychological Impacts among Health Care Personnel during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Introduction: The COVID-19 outbreak is a health emergency, in which health care personnel (HCP) face psychological consequences, working as frontline workers. Therefore, we conducted this study to find out associated psychological impacts among HCP during COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This systematic review follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guideline. The reviewed studies were searched from PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL and Google scholar electronic database using the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms. Results: We searched through 2676 articles, 19 of which were finally included, most of them were cross-sectional and descriptive studies with 12910 participants. HCP were found to be exposed to a variety of psychological problems; anxiety symptoms were reported in 33% (3081 of 9269), depression 28% (2681 of 9487), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 41% (2933 of 7167), sleep problems 26% (903 of 3442), stress 13% (487 of 3496) and fear 67.3% (392 of 582). The severity of impacts was often mild to moderate. The nurses were twice as likely to develop these symptoms. The factors associated with psychological impacts were fear of infection to self and family members, lack of resources and facilities at workplace, demanding work conditions, working closely with COVID-19 clients in intensive care unit and pre-existing medical and psychological problems. Conclusion: Psychological impacts was mild to moderate among majority of HCP during COVID-19 pandemic. The outcome of this review is to provide some utilitarian information for making supportive policies and strategies to improve the psychological wellbeing of frontline HCP during this pandemic.