Anxiety and work overload perception levels of primary healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has greatly affected healthcare workers at the physical and psychosocial level. In this process, primary healthcare workers have taken the most active role by taking part in the filiation groups. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the anxiety and workload perception level of primary healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study. An online survey was conducted among 197 healthcare workers. Personal Information Form, the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale and Work Overload Scale were used as data collection tools in the research. Independent Two-Sample T-Test, One-Way Analysis of Variance, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test were used to evaluate the data. Moreover, the relationships between the scales were evaluated with Pearson correlation analysis and simple regression analysis. RESULTS: The median total score of the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale of healthcare workers was 3.0, and the mean score of the Work Overload Scale was 37.89±7.47. It was found that there was a correlation between the Coronavirus Anxiety and the Work Overload Scales and 21.0% of the variance changes in the Work Overload Scale were affected by coronavirus anxiety. CONCLUSION: It was determined that the level of coronavirus anxiety affects the perception of workload. Therefore, it is recommended that work plans should be made considering this situation.