key: cord-293921-hj8oecmk
authors: Halayem, Soumeyya; Sayari, Nawel; Cherif, Wissal; Cheour, Mejda; Damak, Rahma
title: How Tunisians physicians of public health hospitals deal with COVID‐19 pandemic? Perceived stress and coping strategies
date: 2020-06-27
journal: Psychiatry Clin Neurosci
DOI: 10.1111/pcn.13097
sha: 
doc_id: 293921
cord_uid: hj8oecmk

nan

. Several studies highlighted the psychological impact of COVID-19 among physicians [4, 5] . In Tunisia, there is no available publications about the stress experience and the coping strategies among health workers.

Yet, these aspects have a major impact on prevention and care strategies for physicians.

This study aimed to examine the impact of the COVID-19 on Tunisian physicians working at public health hospitals' stress and coping strategies during the pandemic.

After giving informed consent, participants anonymously took a web-based survey between Mars 18 and May 28 th 2020, which was approved by Razi Hospital Ethics Committee. A semi-structured questionnaire was performed, based on previous studies [2, 4, 6]. We searched for sociodemographic and professionals characteristics, perceptions and concerns about pandemic COVID-19. We used the French 10-items version of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) [7] , and the French version of the brief COPE to asses coping strategies. Items were grouped in four dimensions: social support, problem This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

solving, avoidance, and positive thinking [8] . We used the Pearson correlation test "r", the student test for independent-samples and "ANOVA" test. The significance threshold was fixed to p< 0.05.

The sample consisted of 191 physicians. The average age was 33 years (SD=7.9), 80.9% were females.

One hundred and nine (57.06%) were physicians in training. We divided the sample into three groups according to the field: medical (82.1%), surgical (10.9%) and emergency (6.2%). 156 (81.6%) worked in hospitals in the north, 22 (11.5%) in the center and 12(6.2%) in the south of the country. Physicians in training had higher score (29.68, SD=5.8) than seniors (27.8, SD=6.5), p= 0.039. Age was significantly negatively correlated to PSS-10 score (p= 0.011, r= 0-1.86). We found no significant effect of having a direct contact with COVID-19 patients on stress (p= 0.74). The field of practice was not associated to stress (p= 0.24).

Physicians who trusted on nationals polices managements of the COVID-19 outbreak were significantly less stressed (27.7, SD=5.75) than others (29. 74, SD= 6.39), p= 0.026.

Mean scores of social support, problem solving, avoidance and positive thinking were respectively 15.47 ± 2.67, 7.82 ± 1.9, 21.47 ± 2.92 and 13. ± 2.2. Stressed physicians used significantly more social This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. support (r= 0.216, p=0.003), problem solving (r= 0.23, p= 0.001) and less avoidance (r= -0.33, p<10 -3 )

to cope with the pandemic. We found no association between coping strategies and gender, age, or being in training status.

The main finding of our study was the high score of stress among female and young physicians in training. We found that high level of stress was positively correlated with social support, resolving problem and negatively with avoidance. Taking account of potential social desirability bias related to self-assessment methods, our population seemed to adopt appropriate coping strategies, although they reported more perceived stress than other studies using the same [9] or other instruments [4, 5] .

Stressed physicians in our sample have less trust on nationals polices managements of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Our findings highlights the necessity to focus on physicians' well-being, especially female and young ones. A medium-term assessment of the impact of the epidemic would be interesting.

There is no conflict of interest

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Health Professionals Facing the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic: What Are the Mental Health Risks?

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

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