Evaluation of Occupational Anxiety in Emergency Service Workers in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Aim: COVID-19 has caused concern to people and healthcare workers all over the world. Sharing the increasing number of cases and deaths in the media has increased the anxiety levels of health workers, especially related to their profession. This cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the occupational anxiety levels of the emergency room workers in a training and research hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic and to contribute to the literature by analyzing the related variables. Material and Methods: The population of the study consisted of the emergency service workers of a Training and Research Hospital. Data were collected by reaching 83.9% of the research population. The data of the research were obtained with the "Emergency Service Worker Information Form" and the "Occupational Anxiety Scale for Emergency Health Workers" and the online survey method prepared via Google forms. Descriptive statistics, Independent groups T-test, and one-way analysis of variance (One-Way ANOVA) test were used in the analysis of the data. Results: The mean age of the participants in the study was 33.71±8.13, and the mean age of working in the emergency department was 7.90±6.89 years. It was determined that 86.2% of the emergency service workers came into contact with a Covid-19 positive patient, and 31.9% had contact for longer than 8 hours. During the pandemic period, it was determined that 90.4% of the emergency service workers were worried about work, and 21.3% wanted to quit their job during this period. The occupational anxiety scale means a score of the personnel providing emergency health services was determined as 77.29±16.12. The occupational anxiety scale mean scores of female employees, singles, non-children, working on duty, doctors and nurses, and those who were worried about work during the pandemic period were found to be statistically significantly higher (p