Abstract
Literature shows that frontline doctors and nurses against COVID-19 have been exposed to high levels of stressful events. The same would have presented in about 50% of cases, with post-traumatic symptoms related to stress, depression, anxiety and insomnia. However, the psychological impact among health workers related to the maternal and child departments has not yet been estimated. The present study aimed to investigate state and trait anxiety levels (STAI-Y1 and STAI-Y2) and to describe the mood profile test (POMS) in paediatric healthcare professionals to assess the psychological impact of COVID-19. The sample consists of a total of 75 health workers, individually interviewed (males = 34%; females = 66%), aged between 29 and 55 years (average = 42.3; SD = 13.3), including 42 nurses (56%) and 33 doctors (44%). The results showed that a percentage of subjects between 6% and 17% reported altered mood states, or in the last 2 weeks, they had experienced emotions such as frustration-anger and fatigue. These data show that the state of anxiety experienced has characteristics of reactivity to the situation of upheaval and personal and work change; however, the data do not correlate with chronic anxiety states related to aspects of the personality. Our findings reduce the estimate of the impact of stress for the specific reference population; however, it underlines the need for longitudinal monitoring for cases with post-traumatic characteristics of long-term exposure of the phenomenon.
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