The Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Jordanian Healthcare Workers

Introduction: Healthcare workers face incomparable work and psychological demands that are amplified throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care workers in Jordan. Method: A cross-sectional design was used. Data was collected using an online survey during the outbreak of COVID-19. Results: Overall, of the 312 healthcare workers, almost 38% and 36% presented with moderate to severe anxiety and depression consecutively. Nurses reported more severe symptoms than other healthcare workers. And both anxiety and depression were negatively correlated with well-being. Getting infected was not an immediate worry among healthcare workers; however, they were worried about carrying the virus to their families. Implications for Practice: Stakeholders must understand the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers and plan to provide them with the required psychological support and interventions at an early stage.

Predicting Role of Resilience and Meaning in Life in Perceived Stress of Frontline Health Care Workers during COVID-19 Outbreak

This paper investigates the predicting role of resilience and meaning in life on perceived stress of frontline health care workers treating patients with COVID-19. To measure the variables, a set of online questionnaires including Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSS), Meaning of Life Questionnaire (MLQ), and Resilience Questionnaire (CD_RISC) was prepared. Presence of meaning, search for meaning, notion of personal competence, tolerance and trust in intuition, acceptance and secure relationships, control, and spiritual influences were examined as predictors of perceived stress. Several frontline health care workers were included in the final study. To analyze the data, regression analysis method was used with SPSS-20 software. The results showed that: 1) the regression model of resilience and the presence of meaning in the life of health care workers on their perceived stress was significant (F (6,229)=45.14, p<0.0001); 2) the predictive variables, in total, could explain 53% of the variance of perceived stress; 3) perceived stress correlated negatively with presence of meaning (β = −0.380, p<0.05), with acceptance and secure relationships (β = −0.620, p< 0.05), with control (β = −0.609, p<0.05), and positively correlated with spiritual influences (β = 0.465, p<0.05). Finding and maintaining meaning in life and improving acceptance, secure relationships, and sense of control would reduce perceived stress of frontline health care workers.

A prospective, single-center study to evaluate the clinical performance of Meril ABFind in individuals vaccinated against COVID-19

Background: Accurate rapid antibody detection kits requiring minimum infrastructure are beneficial in detecting post-vaccination antibodies in large populations. ChAdOx1-nCOV (COVISHIELD) and BBV-152 (Covaxin) vaccines are primarily used in India. Methods: In this single-centre prospective study, performance of Meril ABFind was investigated by comparing with Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG II Quant (Abbott Quant), GenScript cPass SARS-CoV-2 neutralization antibody detection kit (GenScript cPass), and COVID Kawach MERILISA (MERILISA) in 62 vaccinated health care workers (HCW) and 40 pre-pandemic samples. Results: In the vaccinated subjects, Meril ABFind kit displayed high sensitivity of 93.3% (CI, 89.83%-96.77%), 94.92% (CI, 91.88%-97.96%), and 90.3% (CI, 86.20%-94.4%) in comparison to Abbott Quant, MERILISA, and GenScript cPass respectively. The results of the Meril ABFind in the COVISHIELD-vaccinated group were excellent with 100% sensitivity in comparison to the other three kits. In the Covaxin-vaccinated group, Meril ABFind displayed sensitivity ranging from 80% to 88.9%. In control samples, there were no false positives detected by Meril ABFind, while Abbott Quant, MERILISA, and GenScript cPass reported 2.5%, 10.0%, and 12.5% false positives, respectively. In the pre-pandemic controls, specificity of Meril ABFind was 100%, Abbott Quant 97.5%, MERILISA 90%, and GenScript cPass 87.5%. Conclusion: The Meril ABFind kit demonstrated satisfactory performance when compared with the three commercially available kits and was the only kit without false positives in the pre-pandemic samples. This makes it a viable option for rapid diagnosis of post vaccination antibodies.

Distinct Vaccine Efficacy Rates Among Health Care Workers During a COVID-19 Outbreak in Jordan

BACKGROUND: We aimed to assess the efficacy of 3 COVID-19 vaccines in a population of health care workers at a tertiary cancer center in Amman, Jordan. METHODS: We evaluated the records of 2855 employees who were fully vaccinated with 1 of 3 different vaccines and those of 140 employees who were not vaccinated. We measured the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections that occurred at least 14 days after the second vaccine dose. RESULTS The 100-day cumulative incidence of PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections was 19.3% +/- 3.3% for unvaccinated employees and 1.7% +/- 0.27% for fully vaccinated employees. The 100-day cumulative infection rates were 0.7% +/- 0.22% in BNT162b2 vaccine recipients (n = 1714), 3.6% +/- 0.77% in BBIBP-CorV recipients (n = 680), and 2.3% +/- 0.73% in ChAdOx1 recipients (n = 456). We used Cox regression analyses to compare the risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection among the different vaccine recipient groups and found a significantly higher infection risk in BBIBP-CorV (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.9 +/- 0.31) and ChAdOx1 recipients (HR = 3.0 +/- 0.41) compared to BNT162b2 recipients (P = .00039 and .0074, respectively). Vaccinated employees who had no previously confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections were at a markedly higher risk for breakthrough infections than those who experienced prior infections (HR = 5.7 +/- 0.73, P = .0178). CONCLUSIONS: Our study offers a real-world example of differential vaccine efficacy among a high-risk population during a national outbreak. We also show the important synergism between a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination.

Optimal strategies to screen health care workers for COVID-19 in the US: a cost-effectiveness analysis

Background Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in health care facilities poses a challenge against pandemic control. Health care workers (HCWs) have frequent and high-risk interactions with COVID-19 patients. We undertook a cost-effectiveness analysis to determine optimal testing strategies for screening HCWs to inform strategic decision-making in health care settings. Methods We modeled the number of new infections, quality-adjusted life years lost, and net costs related to six testing strategies including no test. We applied our model to four strata of HCWs, defined by the presence and timing of symptoms. We conducted sensitivity analyses to account for uncertainty in inputs. Results When screening recently symptomatic HCWs, conducting only a PCR test is preferable; it saves costs and improves health outcomes in the first week post-symptom onset, and costs $83,000 per quality-adjusted life year gained in the second week post-symptom onset. When screening HCWs in the late clinical disease stage, none of the testing approaches is cost-effective and thus no testing is preferable, yielding $11 and 0.003 new infections per 10 HCWs. For screening asymptomatic HCWs, antigen testing is preferable to PCR testing due to its lower cost. Conclusions Both PCR and antigen testing are beneficial strategies to identify infected HCWs and reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in health care settings. IgG tests’ value depends on test timing and immunity characteristics, however it is not cost-effective in a low prevalence setting. As the context of the pandemic evolves, our study provides insight to health-care decision makers to keep the health care workforce safe and transmissions low.

Correlates of COVID-19 vaccination drop-out among health care workers in a tertiary Care hospital of West Bengal

The Government of India launched “COVID-19 vaccination drive” on 16th January, 2021 and health care workers were the first to be prioritised for vaccination. However, the uncertainty regarding safety and efficacy of the vaccine was the major concern amongst them. These led to vaccine hesitancy and ultimately drop out.To estimate the proportion of drop out of COVID-19 vaccination among vaccine-hesitant health care workers (HCWs) of a tertiary care hospital and to find out their perception and other background characteristics responsible for drop out. A facility based descriptive type of observational study, cross-sectional in design was carried out among 329 HCWs of a tertiary care hospital in Kolkata from 16th March- 12thApril, 2021using a pre-designed, pre-tested, structured questionnaire. The study population selected by simple random sampling technique. Data was analysed using Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS v25.0 in the form of descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. About 44.1% of the study population didn’t take the COVID-19 vaccine. Socio-demographic factors like age, gender, religion, education, occupation,perception regarding necessity of vaccination, vaccine efficacy, dose and contraindication, safety in humans and role in future infections were significantly associated with drop out. There was a high proportion of vaccine drop out among health care workers. Different modifiable perceptions with socio-demographic factors had played important roles in COVID-19 vaccination drop out. As the global threat of COVID-19 continues, greater efforts through campaigns that target HCWs are needed to improve the intention of professionals’ vaccine acceptance.

Effects of Safety Zone Implementation on Perceptions of Safety and Well-being When Caring for COVID-19 Patients

Background In March 2020, the caseload of patients positive for COVID-19 in hospitals began increasing rapidly, creating fear and anxiety among health care workers and concern about supplies of personal protective equipment. Objectives To determine if implementing safety zones improves the perceptions of safety, well-being, workflow, and teamwork among hospital staff caring for patients during a pandemic. Methods A safety zone process was implemented to designate levels of contamination risk and appropriate activities for certain areas. Zones were designated as hot (highest risk), warm (moderate risk), or cold (lowest risk). Caregivers working in the safety zones were invited to complete a survey regarding their perceptions of safety, caregiver well-being, workflow, and teamwork. Each question was asked twice to obtain caregiver opinions for the periods before and after implementation of the zones. Results Significant improvements were seen in perceptions of caregiver safety (P &lt; .001) and collaboration within a multidisciplinary staff (P &lt; .001). Significant reductions in perceived staff fatigue (P = .03), perceived cross contamination (P &lt; .001), anxiety (P &lt; .001), and fear of exposure (P &lt; .001) were also seen. Teamwork (P = .23) and workflow (P = .69) were not significantly affected. Conclusions Safety zone implementation improved caregivers’ perceptions of their safety, their well-being, and collaboration within the multidisciplinary staff but did not improve their perceptions of teamwork or workflow.

Information Security in Medical Robotics: A Survey on the Level of Training, Awareness and Use of the Physiotherapist

Cybersecurity is becoming an increasingly important aspect to investigate for the adoption and use of care robots, in term of both patients’ safety, and the availability, integrity and privacy of their data. This study focuses on opinions about cybersecurity relevance and related skills for physiotherapists involved in rehabilitation and assistance thanks to the aid of robotics. The goal was to investigate the awareness among insiders about some facets of cybersecurity concerning human–robot interactions. We designed an electronic questionnaire and submitted it to a relevant sample of physiotherapists. The questionnaire allowed us to collect data related to: (i) use of robots and its relationship with cybersecurity in the context of physiotherapy; (ii) training in cybersecurity and robotics for the insiders; (iii) insiders’ self-assessment on cybersecurity and robotics in some usage scenarios, and (iv) their experiences of cyber-attacks in this area and proposals for improvement. Besides contributing some specific statistics, the study highlights the importance of both acculturation processes in this field and monitoring initiatives based on surveys. The study exposes direct suggestions for continuation of these types of investigations in the context of scientific societies operating in the rehabilitation and assistance robotics. The study also shows the need to stimulate similar initiatives in other sectors of medical robotics (robotic surgery, care and socially assistive robots, rehabilitation systems, training for health and care workers) involving insiders.