Prevalence and associated factors with mental health outcomes among interns and residents physicians during COVID-19 epidemic in Panama: a cross-sectional study

  1. Edward A. Espinosa-Guerra
  2. Edgar R. Rodríguez-Barría
  3. Christl A. Donnelly
  4. Jean-Paul Carrera

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Background

A new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was associated with a newly identified respiratory syndrome, COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in early December 2019. SARS-CoV-2 rapidly spread across the globe resulting in 117 million cases and 2.59 million deaths by March 2021. Rapidly increased numbers of COVID-19 cases overwhelmed public health systems across the world, imposing increased working hours and workloads for health care workers. Here, we have evaluated the prevalence of health outcomes and associated factors of interns and resident physicians in Panama.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was undertaken during July 23, 2020, to August 13, 2020, to evaluate the prevalence of health outcomes and associated factors in interns and residents across Panama. Snowball sampling was used to recruit participants. Then an electronic questionnaire with scales to evaluate anxiety disorders (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9) and post-traumatic stress (IES-R) was evaluated. In addition, socio-demographic variables, clinical history of mental disorders and COVID-19 exposure were evaluated. Independent analyses for each mental health outcome were undertaken using a logistic regression analysis.

Results

A total of 517/1205 (42.9%) interns and residents were nationwide recruited. Of these 274 (53.0%) were interns and 243 (47.0%) residents. The overall prevalence of depression symptoms was 25.3%, 13.7% anxiety and 12.2% post-traumatic stress. At least, 9.3% participants reported having suicidal ideation.

The most parsimonious model showed females had a higher prevalence of mental health disorders, in all results and the married participants were more likely to present depression (OR, 1.73; 95% CI, 1.03-2.91; P = 0.039) or at least one alteration to mental health (OR, 1.66; 95% CI, 1.03-2.68; P = 0.039). Resident physicians in surgical specialties were less likely to have post-traumatic stress (OR, 0.20; 95% CI, 0.06-0.63; P = 0.006) or at least one mental health disturbance (OR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.26-0.83; P = 0.010). A history of psychological trauma and psychiatric pathology were risk factors for most of the disorders investigated.

Conclusions

A high prevalence of mental health disorders was found, showing the need to mitigate this emotional burden among healthcare workers in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.26.21254435: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Approval for this study was obtained from the National Committee on Research Bioethics (CNBI) and participants’ informed consent was obtained online.
    Consent: Approval for this study was obtained from the National Committee on Research Bioethics (CNBI) and participants’ informed consent was obtained online.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    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.

    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 10.1101/2021.03.26.21254435 on medRxiv