key: cord-0758318-nqo20j93 authors: Akyol, Pınar Yeşim; Acar, Hüseyin; Çakır, Adem; Saraçoğlu, Gülçim; Topal, Fatih Esad title: Determining the level and causes of anxiety related to pandemic of healthcare professionals working in the emergency department date: 2021-09-08 journal: Am J Emerg Med DOI: 10.1016/j.ajem.2021.09.010 sha: e9da1c4ef92d186f600e923a10c4eced63a9ec1c doc_id: 758318 cord_uid: nqo20j93 nan the fear of succumbing to the disease, the fear of not being able to see their families, the fear of transmitting Covid-19 to their families, patients and colleagues, and the fear of self-care in quarantine were questioned. Beck anxiety scale was used to determine the level of anxiety. (2) It was conducted with the help of statistical software SPSS 23.0 for Windows® (IBM Inc. Chicago, IL, USA). Results were considered significant at p<0.05, with a 95% confidence interval. 136 hospital workers were included in the study. Demographic characteristics of the participants are provided in Table 1 . Anxiety levels determined in the participants were analyzed and it was found that 48.5% had no anxiety (0-7 points), 27.9% had mild (8-15), 15 .4% had moderate (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) , and 8.1% had severe anxiety (>26 points). Beck anxiety levels were found that female workers had higher levels of anxiety. Again, the relationship between anxiety levels according to marital status was examined and a statistically significant relationship was found. In the Post Hoc analysis test, it was found that the other group (divorced, widowed, etc.) had a statistically significantly higher levels of anxiety compared to the married participants (p=0.02). Again, the relationship between education status and anxiety levels was examined and a statistically significant relationship was found. In the Post Hoc analysis test, it was found that high school graduates had statistically significantly lower levels of anxiety compared to students with bachelor's and master's degrees (p Bachelor's =0.02 ve p Master's =0.02, respectively). No statistically significant relationship was found between the other groups. (Table 1 ). Participants were asked questions about working conditions and Covid-19. The presence of anxiety about them is given in Table 2 . Work-related tension and exposure to high stress can cause workers to experience physical, behavioral, emotional and psychological problems [3] . Study on healthcare workers, higher anxiety levels are observed in women than in men as in our study [8] . Physicians, were found to be 1.6 times more likely to experience psychiatric symptoms compared to nurses [9] . Nurses were found to be more anxious than other healthcare personnel [10, 11] . In another study carried out in Turkey, healthcare workers' scores from the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale did not differ significantly according to occupations [8] . In our study, although the doctors had higher anxiety scores than the nurses, statistical significance could not be found. These different results may due to the difference in the number of male nurses. The anxiety scores, psychiatric symptoms of single healthcare workers was found to be higher than that of married healthcare workers [8, 9] . In another study was determined that the traumatization status of married or divorced people was higher than those of single people [12] . In our study, the relationship between anxiety levels according to marital status was examined and the results showed that the anxiety level of divorced and widowed participants was statistically significantly higher than that of single and married participants. Our finding was different from the studies in the literature. The reason is that most of the single people in our country continue to live with their parents and therefore family support continues. For this reason, we think that they may have similar fears and anxieties as those who are married. In a study was reported that the risk perception, anxiety levels and fear of being infected of healthcare workers were higher than the general population and they have a high level of fear and anxiety of transmitting the virus to their family members during the COVID-19 pandemic [12, 13, 14, 15, 16] . In our study no difference was found. Most of the healthcare workers in our country stayed in a separate place from their families during the pandemic. These periods undoubtedly lead to a significant decrease in the emotional and social support provided by the family. Direct contact with the patient was a risk factor and was associated with increased stress and anxiety among healthcare personnel [17] . In our study also, anxiety level was found to be high in employees who thought that protective equipment did not protect them. While we were measuring the anxiety levels other situations they experienced during that period may have affected our measurements of their anxiety. The fact that diagnostic J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof psychiatric interviews were not conducted with the patients whose anxiety levels were measured is also one of the limitations of our study. We believe that determining the groups with high anxiety rates within all healthcare workers through regular tests, increasing social and psychological support in these groups, and eliminating the fear of lack of equipment will reduce the level of anxiety in workers. 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