The Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on health professionals in Sudan 2020

Abstract

Background: The 2019 novel corona virus (COVID-19) is highly contagious with pandemic transmission, so it is associated with severe health problems and high public anxiety, with healthcare community speculation to be the most distressed because they were at the highest risk of infection. This study aimed to investigate the psychological impact on frontline medical staff in Khartoum state, Sudan, during the COVID‑19 outbreak between January and March 2020 Material and Methods: Patient Health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), generalized anxiety Disorders (GAD-7) scale and the revised impact of event scale (IES-R) were used to assess the depression, anxiety and psychological impact of COVID-19 on participants respectively, by an online questionnaire, analyzed by the statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 24. Results: PHQ-9 depression Scale showed that 72% have some degree of depression with mild depression being the most common seen in 96 (24.2%), severe depression was found to be more among age group between 45-65 and was associated with working in the emergency room (ER), p value was 0.03.The post-traumatic stress disorder among our participants was assessed by the IES-R scale which revealed 67 (16.9%) having mild PTSD, 32 (8.1%) having moderate PTSD,75 (18.9%) having severe PTSD while with statistical association with male gender with (P value= 0.16), age group of 45-65 (P value= 0.03), working in the respiratory wards (P value of 0.039) and history of contact with a positive case of COVID 19, (P value= 0.0001). We used GAD 7anxiety score showed mild anxiety in 32 participants (23.2%) moderate anxiety in 53 (13.4%) and severe anxiety 66 (16.7%). Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of vigor organizational support in predicting and managing health workers symptoms of burnout, and the working conditions they face during novel times of crisis. Keywords: COVID-19, Psychological impact, Health workers, Sudan, GAD-7, PHQ-9, IES-R