Assessment of Stress among Doctors due toCovid-19

Abstract

Introduction: During infectious disease outbreaks, doctors are at high risk of infection, infecting others, and psychological distress. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of stress and anxiety in physicians during the COVID- 19 outbreak in India. Material and Methods: This is a cross-sectional surveybased study conducted at the Department of Psychiatry of a tertiary care medical college and hospital. For the purpose of this study, a Google survey form was created and circulated among all the doctors through WhatsApp groups in June and August 2021. The doctors included JRs, SRs and faculty. All the doctors were included except those who had themselves suffered from COVID-19 or if their family members had suffered since that could have led to increased stress and skewed the findings. The Perceived stress scale (PSS-10) was used to assess perceived stress. Results: In this study total subjects are 217 among 128 were males and 89 females. The maximum number of subjects were in the age group of 31-40 years which were 31.7% (n =69) followed by age group 41–50 years having 36.4% (n = 78) in this group and 17.9% were >51 years. This participant worked at different duties during Covid-19 pandemic era. 23 participants were High stress degree of stress on PSS, 135 (62.2%) Participants displayed moderate degree and 59 (27.1%) shows low level of stress during pandemic era. Further inspection in context of department wise stress distribution reveals that 217 subject among Non-clinical department pool shows high degree of stress were 4.1% moderate degree were 24.8% and 10.5% found having low level of stress. Conclusion: Doctors working in COVID-19 wards perceive considerable stress. Stress management should be an integral part of the curriculum of doctors so that they can serve the humanity efficiently and effectively during the pandemic and in future.