COVID19 Infection in Health Care Professionals: Risks, Work-Safety and Psychological Issues
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
COVID19 Infection in Health Care Professionals: Risks, WorkSafety and Psychological Issues Yogesh G. Dabholkar1,3 Shivakumar Divity1
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Bhagyashree Ajit Sagane1 • Twinkle Y. Dabholkar2
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Received: 14 June 2020 / Accepted: 20 June 2020 Ó Association of Otolaryngologists of India 2020
Abstract COVID-19 infection has spread widely over past 5 months to become a pandemic of global proportions affecting almost every country. While HCPs are expected to tackle this crisis by working in hospital and intensive care setting, there is real risk of them contracting infection and even dying. This article aims to report cases of healthcare personnel (HCPs) contracting COVID19 in various settings in a tertiary care hospital, a designated COVID centre, with view to disseminate information and review safety and psychological health issues of healthcare professionals. This study is a cross-sectional hospital-based survey from April 2020-June 2020. Data on demographics, workplace safety and psychological parameters from HCPs was collected by both interview and an online questionnaire form. A total of 40 healthcare workers were infected in the hospital in a period of 2 months since the first COVID case was admitted in the hospital. Almost 57.5% reported positive on several psychological parameters like anxiety, fear, anger, irritability and insomnia. About 42.5% had no psychological counselling after testing positive. These cases illustrate work-place risks for healthcare workers of acquiring COVID19 and highlight the problems faced in terms of risks of transmission to patients and colleagues, isolation of contacts in departments leading to near-breakdown of services and psychological stress to healthcare workers. Healthcare workers being at frontline & Yogesh G. Dabholkar [email protected] 1
Department of ENT, School of Medicine, D.Y. Patil University, Navi Mumbai, India
2
School of Physiotherapy, D.Y. Patil University, Nerul, Navi Mumbai, India
3
Navi Mumbai, India
of exposure to corona patients are at increased risk of developing COVID19 infections. Healthcare workers are working under tremendous stress in this pandemic and it is necessary to combat fear with facts and work towards safe work atmosphere so that they can discharge their duties to best of their ability. Keywords COVID19 Work-safety Psychological parameters Hcps
Introduction Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an ongoing pandemic of lower respiratory tract disease [1]. As such, rapid dissemination of information about origin as well as mode of transmission of this virus is central for disease control and implementing preventive measures and curative strategies [2]. Corona viruses exist in diameter range of 65–125 nm with single stranded RNA as nuclear material [3]. First reports of this disease date back to December 2019 from Wuhan province of China where it supposedly originated from an animal market and was named novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) on basis of sequ
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