The attitude and psychological status of medical staff in China during the COVID-19 outbreak: a cross-sectional survey

• Published in: The Lancet (British edition) 2020-11, Vol.396, p.S2-S2
• Main Authors: Yan, Ziyi, Cui, Yali, Chen, Wen, Yu, Mingjing, Long, Qichen, Yuan, Yunyi, Ma, Huichao, Luo, Panyu, Wang, Hongyu, Jiang, Yongmei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anxiety; Attitudes; Chi-square test; Clinical medicine; Colleges & universities; Coronaviruses; Corporate histories; COVID-19; Cross-sectional studies; Education; Epidemics; Goodness of fit; Health care facilities; Informed consent; Medical ethics; Medical personnel; Mental depression; Nursing; Oral Presentations; Outbreaks; Polls & surveys; Psychological assessment; Statistical tests; Students; Surveys; Variance analysis; Viral diseases
• ISSN: 0140-6736; 1474-547X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32422-3

In early 2020, the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China greatly increased the burden on medical staff. We aimed to investigate the attitudes of medical practitioners towards arranging rotations for medical students during this period of staff shortage and to assess their psychological state. We used the self-rating depression scale (SDS) and the self-rating anxiety scale (SAS) to do a psychological assessment of both medical and non-medical staff from 25 centres in different provinces in China. Participants were recruited through hospital departments, online medical-alumni organisations, and open recruitment through online platforms. Participant eligibility criteria for all participants included being older than 18 years and living in China during the survey period, and participant-specific criteria included the following: medical practitioners had to work as a doctor, nurse, or clinical laboratory technician in a medical institution, and work during the COVID-19 outbreak; medical students had to have majored in clinical medicine, nursing, or clinical laboratory diagnosis, and be on an undergraduate internship (phase 1 student) or postgraduate or standardised trainees (phase 2 student), and had to work during the COVID-19 outbreak; non-medical participants had to work in non-medical industries. Medical staff included medical practitioners and medical students. We used WeChat online questionnaires to investigate the attitude of medical practitioners and medical students to arranging for students to be on duty during the epidemic period. The primary outcomes of this study were attitude of medical staff to medical students, depression index (according to the SDS), and anxiety index (according to the SAS). We used descriptive statistics to analyse demographic covariates, SDS scores, and SAS scores, χ2 and Fisher's exact test to compare categorical data, independent t-tests and one-way ANOVA tests to compare numerical data, LSD tests and Tamhane tests to compare significance in multiple groups, Pearson's tests to compare the goodness of fit of numerical data, and Spearman's tests to compare the goodness of fit of two ordinal category data. This study was approved by the medical ethics committee of West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University (approval number 2020-012). The study was done in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and all participants provided informed consent. We recruited 506 people (236 medical staff, of w