Impact of COVID-19 on Health Care Service Provider Practices in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Background: Both healthcare personnel and patients have been impacted negatively by the COVID-19 epidemic, which has had a substantial effect on the healthcare sector. The healthcare workforce consists of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Objectives: To assess the psychological impact of COVID19 pandemic among different healthcare providers by assessing the depression, stress level, and anxiety related to COVID19 pandemic and the effect it had on their practice and psychological well-being.
Methodology: To learn more about the experiences of healthcare professionals and to ascertain the effects of COVID-19 on their practice, a cross-sectional observational study including 311 practicing physicians, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, lab technicians, and other hospital staff members was carried out across Saudi Arabia. A pretested semi-structured QuestionPro questionnaire that was sent electronically via social media, email, and phones was used to collect responses from study participants. It was cleaned up before being examined with SPSS program 28. Frequency and percentage displays were used to illustrate quantitative data. Spearman's correlation was used to calculate the association between stress score, anxiety score, and depression score. Appropriate statistical tests of significance were used to determine the association between stress scores and various background characteristics. Statistical significance was set at the 0.05 level for P-value. Results: Over half of the medical staff had expertise in caring for COVID-19 patients, and approximately two out of every five trial participants had a history of COVID-19 infection previous to immunisation. The vaccine could minimise the infection, according to 3/4 of them. Among those surveyed, just 33% had a history of chronic diseases. The majority of participants believed they had dealt with difficult events at some time in the preceding week for all of the categories. Similar to this, depression was sometimes experienced for 4 items but never for 3 when there were the most participants. It could be deduced that the majority of participants had normal Anxiety (33.8%), Stress (36%), and Depression (38.6%) scores. The median psychological assessments were considerably higher among those who were between the ages of 35 and 56, divorced, were already infected with the COVID-19 virus previous to immunisation, and had a history of chronic disease.
Conclusion: The study's findings led to the conclusion that stress and anxiety are significant COVID-19 effects on both healthcare professionals and patients. The epidemic has also highlighted the significance of the need for appropriate safety equipment, practices, and support for the physical and mental well-being of medical personnel.