Occupational Stress Assessment of Health Care Workers (HCWs) Facing COVID‐19 Patients in Iran

Background: The health care workers (HCWs) in medical sectors are among the vital assets of any country during the emergence of crises such as pandemic prevalence caused by COVID-19. Therefore, maintaining the health of this group of staffs is necessary not only to save lives of patients, but also to control prevalence of diseases. People at the frontline of fighting COVID-19 are at higher risk for mental health problems, including stress, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. The main objective of this study is to study the status of job stress in the three occupational groups of nurses, physicians and hospital cleaning crew facing corona patients in Iran hospitals.Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive analytical study is performed on 290 medical staff (nurses, physicians and cleaning crew) facing COVID-19 patients working in different hospitals in Iran in 2020. Demographic information form and Job Stress Questionnaire (HSE tool indicator) were used to collect data. The HSE questionnaire has 35 questions and 7 areas, which was developed in the 1990s by the UK Health and Safety Institute to measure job stress.Results: 59% of the participants in this study were male. 62% of participants in this study were married. Participants often had work experience between 3 to 10 years. 66% of the participants were in the age range of 20 to 30 years. Percent of participants’ shift work satisfaction was 67%. Also, according to the results of the present study, 87% of nurses, 79% of cleaning crew and 67% of physicians had a partial to high levels of stress that, on average, 77.5% of the HCWs participating in this study had at least a small amount of stress.Conclusions: The prevalence of COVID-19 has a great impact on the level of job stress in the HCWs of Iranian hospitals. Factors such as high workload, low response time at the peak of hospital visits, lack of adequate support for top managers of all job groups equally, lack of access to adequate personal protective equipment, unpreparedness of managers and staff to respond to the critical and emergency conditions on stress incidence were effective on the present study.