Perceptions of Risk of Attending Hospital during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a UK public opinion survey

  1. Rebecca Pritchard
  2. Emer M Brady
  3. Yogini V Chudasama
  4. Melanie J Davies
  5. Gerry P McCann

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

In order to inform clinical and research practice in secondary care in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, an online survey was used to collect public opinions on attending hospitals. The survey link was circulated via the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Public Involvement (PPI) Leads network and social media. 402 people completed the survey. Participants age ranged from the 18-85+, with the majority (337 (84%)) aged between 35 to 74 years. There were a higher number of women (77%) compared to men (23%); and were mainly White European (91%) compared to BAME (6%), or other (2%).

Data collection included self-identified risk status due to comorbidity or age, and 100 point Likert-type scales to measures feelings of safety, factors affecting feelings of safety, intention to participate in research, comfort with new ways of working and attitudes to research.

Results for feelings of safety scales indicate two distinct groups; one of respondents who felt quite safe and one of those who did not. Implementation of COVID-19 related safety measures such as social distancing, use of PPE and cleaning were strongly supported by most respondents. There was ambivalence around less certain measures such as regular staff antigen and antibody testing. Respondents were most likely to participate in research related to their own condition, COVID-19 research and vaccine research, but less likely to participate in healthy volunteer research, especially if suffering from a pre-existing comorbidity identified with increased risk or were female. There was general agreement that participants are comfortable with new ways of working, such as remote consultation, though women and BAME respondents were less comfortable. Findings raise concerns for health inequalities already impacting some groups in the pandemic. The role of clinical necessity and personal benefit support the reopening of services in line with clinical necessity. Moderate caution in respect of vaccine research relative to patient-participant research presents a challenge for pending recruitment demands, and would benefit from qualitative research to explore themes and concerns in more depth and support development and targeting of key messaging.

SUMMARY BOX

What is already known on this topic?

  • Very little is known about public perceptions of risk of exposure to COVID-19 and engagement with clinical and research provision in secondary care.

  • This research explores public perspectives in five key areas in order to inform health policy and both population and individual communication regarding attending secondary care sites for clinical and research activities.

    • What this study adds?

  • Insight into public risk perceptions specific to attending hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic

  • There are distinct groups of people who do feel safe and those who do not

  • Use of personal protective equipment, social distancing measures and cleaning are essential to supporting feelings of safety and are well supported

  • Recruitment to vaccine and COVID-19 studies presents challenges, especially amongst women and BAME respondents

  • Most people are very comfortable with new ways of working (i.e. remote/digital)

  • There is very strong support for continued health science research

  • Insight into the differences in perceptions and attitudes by individual risk status (due to age or comorbidity), sex and ethnicity.

    • Article activity feed

    1. ScreenIT

      SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.24.20180836: (What is this?)

      Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

      Table 1: Rigor

      Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Ethics approval and informed consent: The survey included participant information, which remained accessible throughout survey completion.
      IRB: This research has been reviewed by the Medicine and Biological Sciences Research Ethics Committee of the University of Leicester (ref:26258-rp237-ls:healthsciences).
      Randomizationnot detected.
      Blindingnot detected.
      Power Analysisnot detected.
      Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

      Table 2: Resources

      Software and Algorithms
      SentencesResources
      Data from REDCap was exported into Stata version 16.0 to conduct data analyses.
      REDCap
      suggested: (REDCap, RRID:SCR_003445)

      Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

      Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
      A limitation of this work is the much smaller number of BAME respondents (6%) compared to White (91%) resultant from the need to be responsive this survey was undertaken rapidly, in just 2 weeks and only in English. Due to the limited nature of the sample therefore it is important to be cautious generalising especially as we found significant differences by ethnicity.

      Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

      Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

      Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

      Results from rtransparent:
      • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
      • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
      • No protocol registration statement was detected.

      About SciScore

      SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

    2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.24.20180836v1 on medRxiv