Fear and death anxiety among Latin American doctors during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction

A patient’s death elicits various feelings arise in doctors such as impotence and guilt that could trigger physical or psychological symptoms. Despite its impact, few studies have explored anxiety and fear of death among physicians.

Objective

To evaluate perceptions and responses to one’s mortality among Latin American physicians treating COVID-19 patients.

Methodology

This cross-sectional study utilized the Collet-Lester Modified Fear of Death Scale and the Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) to collect data from physicians in Latin America.

Results

219 doctors from Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia filled out the online questionnaire. Fear of death among the sample population ranged from 56.2% to 90%. Furthermore, the prevalence of “High Anxiety” was 80.8%. A statistically significant association was found between fear according to age and time of graduation (p = 0.010 and p = 0.020, respectively). No differences were found by gender, age, and country of origin or practice.

Conclusion

Physicians experience feelings of helplessness and guilt upon the death of a patient and those feelings can trigger physical or psychological symptoms. For these states of fear and anxiety about death, more frequent in times of pandemic, doctors must be prepared, and institutions must provide them with the necessary means to help them overcome these difficult times.

SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.12.21251445: (What is this?)

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

Table 1: Rigor

Institutional Review Board Statement	IRB: Ethical Considerations: The study was approved by the Human Subjects Committee at the Universidad Ricardo Palma. Consent: Passive informed consent was obtained from all the participants who agreed to participate in the study by filling in the virtual questionnaire.
Randomization	not detected.
Blinding	not detected.
Power Analysis	not detected.
Sex as a biological variable	Demographic variables included gender (male and female); age; time from graduation; country of origin; worksite type (public and/or private institution, retired); specialty (e.g., internal medicine, pulmonology, emergency medicine).

Table 2: Resources

No key resources detected.

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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

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.

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