Secure your own mask first before assisting others: investigating the health of frontline care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented pressure on health care workers (HCWs). This pressure is caused by the scarcity and prolonged use of PPE (Hu et al., 2020), being exposed to suffering from their patients (Brooks et al., 2020), making difficult moral decisions (Xiang et al., 2020), constant changes in policies and regulations (Chen et al., 2020), and the fear of death or spreading the infection to their loved ones (Shanafelt et al., 2020). To investigate this issue, 329 HCWs in Nova Scotia were recruited. Participants completed a survey asking about their demographics and pertinent occupational health constructs. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling and regression analysis. Based on the results, pandemic anxiety was associated with emotional exhaustion and cynicism. Moral distress was associated with cynicism. Peer social support was associated with lower cynicism and higher professional efficacy. Organizational support was highly correlated with all three subfactors of burnout. Burnout subfactors alone could predict up to 30% of the variance in turnover intention controlling for the participants’ demographics and work characteristics. The findings did not support the mediation effect of burnout in the relationship between COVID-19 demands/resources and withdrawal behaviour. In conclusion, during large-scale public health events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, boosting peer and organizational support skills can buffer and mitigate the stressors to help people be more engaged with their work and stay longer in their organization.