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. 2022 Aug 3;19(15):9514.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159514.

The North Italian Longitudinal Study Assessing the Mental Health Effects of SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic on Health Care Workers-Part I: Study Design and Psychometric Structural Validity of the HSE Indicator Tool and Work Satisfaction Scale

Giovanni Veronesi  1 , Emanuele Maria Giusti  2   3 , Alessia D'Amato  4 , Francesco Gianfagna  1   5 , Rossana Borchini  6 , Gianluca Castelnuovo  3   7 , Licia Iacoviello  1   8 , Marco Mario Ferrario  1
Affiliations

The North Italian Longitudinal Study Assessing the Mental Health Effects of SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic on Health Care Workers-Part I: Study Design and Psychometric Structural Validity of the HSE Indicator Tool and Work Satisfaction Scale

Giovanni Veronesi et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Literature on the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the mental health of Health Care Workers (HCWs) is mostly based on cross-sectional surveys. We designed a longitudinal study to assess work-related stress and mental health before and after the pandemic onset in a university-hospital in Lombardia region, Italy. We report on sample representativeness and structural validity of questionnaires assessing work stress (HSE Indicator Tool, HSE-IT) and work satisfaction (WS), which were not validated in the HCWs population. n = 1287 HCWs from 67 hospital wards/offices were invited to an online survey in summer 2019 (pre-COVID-19 wave) and again during winter 2020 (COVID-19 wave). Selected hospital wards/offices did not differ from the remaining wards for turn-over and down-sizing rates, overload, sick leaves, and night shifts (Wilcoxon rank tests p-values > 0.05). Participation rates were 70% (n = 805) and 60% (n = 431) in the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 waves, respectively. Socio-demographic and work-related characteristics did not impact data completeness nor participation to the COVID-19 wave. While confirming a 7-component structure for HSE-IT, we identified a new factor related to participation in work organization. A one-factor model for WS had satisfactory fit. Our longitudinal study based on a representative sample and adopting validated questionnaires is well-suited to elucidate the role of work conditions on the development of mental health disorders in HCWs.

Keywords: COVID-19; HSE indicator tool; health care workers; longitudinal study; mental health; principal component analysis; work satisfaction.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Study flow chart: invited, eligible and respondents to pre-COVID-19 (blue boxes) and to COVID-19 (yellow boxes) waves.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Timing of the study waves, and time trend in the weekly number of COVID-19 cases among health care workers in the investigated Varese city hospital (solid black line) and in the population living in the Varese Province (dashed grey line; cases per 100).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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