Amid the COVID-19 chaos in many hospitals, emergency medicine physicians in seven cities around the country experienced rising levels of anxiety and emotional exhaustion, regardless of the intensity of the local surge, according to a new analysis led by UC San Francisco.
Amid the COVID-19 chaos in many hospitals, emergency medicine physicians in seven cities around the country experienced rising levels of anxiety and emotional exhaustion, regardless of the intensity of the local surge, according to a new analysis led by UC San Francisco.
In the first known study to assess stress levels of U.S. physicians during the coronavirus pandemic, doctors reported moderate to severe levels of anxiety at both work and home, including worry about exposing relatives and friends to the virus. Among the 426 emergency physicians surveyed, most reported changes in behavior toward family and friends, especially decreased signs of affection.
“Occupational exposure has changed the vast majority of physicians’ behavior at both work and home,” said lead author Robert M. Rodriguez, MD, a professor of Emergency Medicine at UCSF. “At home, doctors are worried about exposing family members or roommates, possibly needing to self-quarantine, and the effects of excess social isolation because of their work on the front line.”
The results, which appear July 21, 2020, in Academic Emergency Medicine, found slight differences between men and women, with women reporting higher stress. Among male physicians, the median reported effect of the pandemic on both work and home stress levels was 5 on a scale of 1 to 7 (1=not at all, 4=somewhat, and 7=extremely). For women, the median was 6 in both areas. Both men and women also reported that levels of emotional exhaustion or burnout increased from a pre-pandemic median of 3 to a median of 4 after the pandemic started.
Read more at University of California - San Francisco
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