Assessment of post‐SARS‐CoV‐2 fatigue among physicians working in COVID‐designated hospitals in Dhaka, Bangladesh

  1. A. T. M. Hasibul Hasan
  2. Nusrat Khan
  3. Nazmul Hoque Munna
  4. Wahidur Rahman Choton
  5. Mostofa Kamal Arefin
  6. Mohammad Abdullah Az Zubayer Khan
  7. Mohaimen Mansur
  8. Rashedul Hassan
  9. Muhammad Shamsul Arefin
  10. Nayema Afroze
  11. Elham Nuzhat
  12. Muhammad Sougatul Islam

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Abstract

Background

Fatigue has been observed after the outbreaks of several infectious diseases around the world. To explore the fatigue level among physicians working in COVID‐19‐designated hospitals in Bangladesh, a matched case‒control study was conducted on post‐SARS‐CoV‐2 fatigue.

Method

In this study, 105 physicians diagnosed with COVID‐19 who were declared cured at least 6 weeks before the interview date were recruited as cases, and the same number of age‐ and designation‐matched healthy physicians were recruited as controls from the same hospital at a 1:1 ratio. Diagnosis of COVID‐19 infection was confirmed by detection of SARS CoV‐2 antigen by RT‒PCR from reference laboratories in Bangladesh or by HRCT chest.

Result

Approximately two‐thirds of the physicians were male (67.6% vs. 32.4%). More than 80% of them were younger than 40 years. The cases had a significantly greater number of comorbid conditions. The fatigue severity scale (FSS) score (mean) was much higher for cases (36.7 ± 5.3 vs. 19.3 ± 3.8) than for the control group, with a statistically significant difference. Similarly, approximately 67.7% of the previously COVID‐19‐positive physicians were in the highest FSS score tertile compared to the respondents in the control group, who had a mean score of <3.

Conclusion

Physicians who had a previous history of COVID‐19 infection had significantly higher total and mean FSS scores, signifying a more severe level of fatigue than physicians who had never been COVID‐19 positive while working in the same hospital irrespective of their age and sex.

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  1. Version published to 10.1002/brb3.3553
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.08.21251352: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIACUC: Ethical Issue: The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Biosafety, Biosecurity and Ethical Committee of Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh [BBEC, JU/M 2020/COVID-19/(11)1].
    Consent: Written informed consent was taken from each participant after providing a detailed explanation about the objective, methodology, and purpose of the study.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Data analysis was done by STATA version 16.
    STATA
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    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:
    Our study is not free from limitations. First of all, there may be selection bias on relatively young physicians since the proportion of young physicians working in COVID-19 designated hospitals are much higher than the seniors. We tried to correct this by age and designation matching. Moreover, senior physicians aged more than 50 are not directly involved with the management of COVID-19 patients. The senior consultant physicians were supervising the COVID-19 management mostly online. So, we cannot infer the fatigue and comorbidity status of elder/senior physicians. Various other confounding factors might have been unexplored, e.g. environmental exposure, economic status, family history, etc. Finally, although case-control study designs are efficient for rare diseases, a cohort study could yield multiple outcomes and stronger associations; which was not possible due to time and financial constraints.

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.08.21251352 on medRxiv