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. 2023 Nov 30:11:1236931.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1236931. eCollection 2023.

Anxiety among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal study

Esmee Bosma  1 , Verena Feenstra  1 , Sandra H van Oostrom  1 ; Lifelines Corona Research Initiative; Karin I Proper  1   2
Collaborators, Affiliations

Anxiety among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal study

Esmee Bosma et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare workers faced extreme working conditions and were at higher risk of infection with the coronavirus. These circumstances may have led to mental health problems, such as anxiety, among healthcare workers. Most studies that examined anxiety among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic were cross-sectional and focused on the first months of the pandemic only. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the longitudinal association between working in healthcare and anxiety during a long-term period (i.e., 18 months) of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Data were used from online questionnaires of the Lifelines COVID-19 prospective cohort with 22 included time-points (March 2020-November 2021). In total, 2,750 healthcare workers and 9,335 non-healthcare workers were included. Anxiety was assessed with questions from the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview, and an anxiety sum score (0-7) was calculated. Negative binomial generalized estimating equations (GEE), adjusted for demographic, work and health covariates, were used to examine the association between working in healthcare and anxiety.

Results: Anxiety sum scores over time during the COVID-19 pandemic were similar for healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers. No differences between the anxiety sum scores of healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers were found [incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.97, 95% CI = 0.91-1.04].

Conclusion: This study did not find differences between healthcare workers and non-healthcare in perceived anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; anxiety; healthcare workers; longitudinal data; mental health.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram of the study population.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Percentages of participants without any anxiety symptoms over the different COVID-19 questionnaire rounds (March 2020–November 2021), stratified for healthcare workers (n = 2,750) and non-healthcare workers (n = 9,335). # High COVID-19 risk level (>100 COVID-19 associated hospitalizations per day) (37).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Median (and IQR) anxiety scores (for scores >0) over the different COVID-19 questionnaire rounds (March 2020–November 2021), stratified for healthcare workers (n = 2,750) and non-healthcare workers (n = 9,335). # High COVID-19 risk level (>100 COVID-19 associated hospitalizations per day) (37).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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