Worry from contracting COVID-19 infection and its stigma among Egyptian health care providers

Doaa Mohamed Osman; Fatma R Khalaf; Gellan K Ahmed; Ahmed Y Abdelbadee; Ahmed M Abbas; Heba M Mohammed

doi:10.1186/s42506-021-00099-6

Worry from contracting COVID-19 infection and its stigma among Egyptian health care providers

J Egypt Public Health Assoc. 2022 Jan 10;97(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s42506-021-00099-6.

Authors

Doaa Mohamed Osman¹, Fatma R Khalaf², Gellan K Ahmed^{3

4}, Ahmed Y Abdelbadee⁵, Ahmed M Abbas⁵, Heba M Mohammed⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt. doaamouhammed@aun.edu.eg.
² Family and Community Health Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.
³ Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.
⁴ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
⁵ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.
⁶ Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.

Abstract

Backgrounds: Healthcare providers (HCPs) in COVID-19 epidemic face stressful workload of disease management, shortage of protective equipment and high risk of infection and mortality. These stressors affect greatly their mental health. The aim is to identify working conditions among Egyptian HCPs during COVID-19 epidemic as well as stigma and worry perceptions from contracting COVID-19 infection and their predictors.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 565 HCPs. Data was collected through Google online self-administered questionnaire comprised seven parts: demographics characteristics, knowledge and attitude of COVID-19, working condition, worry of contracting COVID-19 at work, discrimination intention at work for COVID-19 patients, stigma assessment using impact stigma, and internalized shame scales.

Results: The vast majority of HCPs (94.7%) were worried from contracting COVID-19 at work. Risk factors for perceiving severe worry from contracting COVID-19 were expecting infection as a severe illness, believing that infection will not be successfully controlled, improbability to continue working during the pandemic even if in a well/fit health, high discrimination intention and impact stigma scales. Significantly high impact stigma scores were detected among those aged < 30 years, females, workers primarily in sites susceptible for contracting COVID-19 infection, those had severe worry from contracting infection at work, and high internalized shame scale. The risk factors for perceiving higher internalized shame scores were not having a previous experience in working during a pandemic, high discrimination intention towards COVID-19 patients and high impact stigma scale.

Conclusions: Considerable levels of worry and stigma were detected among Egyptian HCPs during COVID-19 outbreak. The psychological aspect of health care providers should not be overlooked during epidemic; appropriate institutional mental health support should be provided especially for young HCPs, those without previous work experience in epidemic and those who work in high-risk units. Raising the community awareness about contribution of HCPs in fighting the epidemic might decrease stigmatization action toward HCPs.

Keywords: COVID-19; Egypt; Health care providers; Stigma; Worry.