Psychological status, coping strategies and knowledge of medical personnel toward children with an acute respiratory tract Infection during a COVID-19 outbreak
Keywords:
COVID-19 medical personnel, Psychological status, Coping strategies, ChildrenAbstract
Introduction: In 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively
impacted people across the world. Medical personnel are a high risk group of people to be
psychologically stressed by their workload, risk of infection and fear of spreading the virus
amongst their own family.
Objective: The aim of this study was to screen for psychiatric illness amongst medical personnel,
and find an association between psychological status, coping strategies and knowledge of
frontline medical personnel, and their practices when working with children having an acute
respiratory infection during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Methods: From August 31 to September 2, 2020, a cross-sectional, analytic survey was
conducted using a questionnaire. The surveys were distributed to 100 medical personnel
in the Burapha University hospital. The questionnaire included the Thai General Health
Questionnaire-28 (Thai GHQ-28) as well questions about the respondent’s basic demographic
information, coping strategies and general knowledge of COVID-19. The association between
the Thai GHQ-28 with the coping strategies and knowledge of these medical personnel, was
analyzed by using Pearson’s correlation analysis.
Results: Eighty-three questionnaires were returned, representing 83% of the target population.
From the Thai GHQ-28, nineteen subjects (22.9%) scored more than or equal to six (meaning
they are having psychological distress.) The mean Thai GHQ-28 results, coping strategies and
knowledge scores were 2.94±4.2 (total score 28 points), 28.9±5.8 (total score 48 points) and
14.2±1.3 (total score 16 points) respectively. Theassociation between the Thai GHQ-28, coping
strategies and proficiency of medical personnel was not statistically significant.
Conclusion: With a quarter of medical personnel experiencing psychological distress during the
pandemic of COVID-19, psychological support policies for medical personnel should be provided.
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