Anxiety About the Risk of Death of Their Patients in Health Professionals in Spain: Analysis at the Peak of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 health crisis has had a global effect, but the consequences in the different countries affected have been very different. In Spain, in a short period of time, health professionals went from a situation of stability to living with a working environment characterized by overcrowded hospitals, lack of individual protection equipment, non-existent or contradictory work protocols, as well as an unknown increase in mortality. Although in their professional activity health workers are closely linked to death processes, in recent months, working conditions and health emergencies have drawn an unheard of working scenario, with the stress and anxiety they may suffer when faced with the death of their patients. The present quantitative research was carried out in different hospitals in Spain on health professionals during the month of April 2020. Through the subscale of anxiety in the face of the death of others, developed by Collett–Lester, it has been verified that health professionals have had to develop their work in a context of precariousness, putting at risk both their individual and collective health, notably increasing anxiety in the face of the death of their patients. The predictive variables of this anxiety have been the absence of individual protection equipment, as well as high levels in the burnout subscales of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.