The association between sleep disturbance and coronaphobia among physicians in primary health care centers of Ministry of Health, Jazan Province

Abstract

Background: Sleep disturbances are extremely common among doctors with profound effect on quality of life. Coronaphobia is the dread of COVID-19 that can affect physicians and their sleep quality. Aim of Study: Our study aimed to assess sleep disturbance and its association with coronaphobia among primary health care (PHC) physicians in Primary Health care Centers (PHCCs) of the Ministry of Health, Jazan Province, Saudi Arabia. Method: The study is a cross-sectional questionnaire-based observational investigation using a simple random sampling scheme. The sampling frame was all PHC physicians practicing in Jazan Province. We used the Fear-of-COVID and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaires. Poisson Regression modelling techniques were used to analyse the adjusted effect of sociodemographic factors on Fear-of-COVID and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality scores. Results: A total of 385 physicians participated in the study. The prevalence of poor quality of sleep among our physicians was 47.3%, while prevalence of coronaphobia was 56.2%. Coronaphobia had significant negative impact on sleep quality, even with adjustment for the effect of all other clinical and demographic variables. A rise by one point in the fear of COVID questionnaire is associated with a rise by 2.3% points in the PSQI score (indicative of poorer sleep quality, p = 0.00081). Conclusions: Coronaphobia is common and has detrimental effect of sleep quality among PHC physicians. Coronaphobia has negative impact on sleep quality. Higher burden of depressive symptoms worsens physicians’ sleep quality. Recommendations: Support for PHC physicians’ psychological and physical well-being is paramount during the current COVID-19 crisis. Keywords: Coronaphobia, sleep quality, risk factors, South-western Saudi Arabia