Stress test: translational research during COVID‐19 pandemic

• Published in: Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle Sarcopenia and Muscle, 2020-12, Vol.11 (6), p.1385-1387
• Main Authors: Pumberger, Matthias, Schömig, Friederike, Haffer, Henryk, Mehl, Julia, Duda, Georg N.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptation, Psychological; Adult; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - psychology; COVID-19 - virology; Employees; Female; Humans; Likert scale; Male; Medical research; Middle Aged; Pandemics; Pandemics - prevention & control; Questionnaires; Research Personnel - psychology; Research Personnel - statistics & numerical data; SARS-CoV-2 - physiology; Science; Society; Stress, Psychological - psychology; Surveys and Questionnaires; Translational Medical Research - methods
• ISSN: 2190-5991; 2190-6009
• DOI: 10.1002/jcsm.12640

On 17 March 2020, all research activities were suspended by the Berlin Senate Chancellery for Science and Research, unless there were valid reasons for continuation.1 Over the past weeks, several prestigious journals pointed out the importance of non‐COVID‐19 research during shutdown worldwide.2-7 However, to our knowledge, no studies have been published regarding the pandemic's effect on personnel at different levels of their career in research institutions. Since Germany has not been hit as heavily as expected and scientific and economical structures were in good shape prior to the pandemic, we were wondering how scientists unexpectedly confronted with the pandemic's effects by home office and lab shutdown would react. Study design, participants, survey, and statistics In this cross‐sectional study, we conducted an online‐based anonymous voluntary survey within three research institutions of the largest German university hospital from 10 to 18 of May. [...]to this rather positive impression and even though most participants did not report that they expect financial difficulties or financial threats due to the pandemic, 61.4% of participants were concerned about the further funding of their working position, showing a substantial uncertainty about the course of the pandemic and future changes in their specific—scientific focused—work environment. While short‐time work or discharge of employees was reported at low frequencies, home office was a concept applied by the majority of participants, assumedly leading to a reduction of onsite experiments. [...]not only the reported delay of achieving doctorates or professorships but also possibly more severely the delay of new scientific discoveries needs to be discussed.