Women in healthcare experiencing occupational stress and burnout during COVID-19: a rapid review

  1. Abi Sriharan
  2. Savithiri Ratnapalan
  3. Andrea C Tricco
  4. Doina Lupea

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Abstract

COVID-19 has had an unprecedent impact on physicians, nurses and other health professionals around the world, and a serious healthcare burnout crisis is emerging as a result of this pandemic.

Objectives

We aim to identify the causes of occupational stress and burnout in women in medicine, nursing and other health professions during the COVID-19 pandemic and interventions that can support female health professionals deal with this crisis through a rapid review.

Methods

We searched MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO and ERIC from December 2019 to 30 September 2020. The review protocol was registered in PROSPERO and is available online. We selected all empirical studies that discussed stress and burnout in women healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results

The literature search identified 6148 citations. A review of abstracts led to the retrieval of 721 full-text articles for assessment, of which 47 articles were included for review. Our findings show that concerns of safety (65%), staff and resource adequacy (43%), workload and compensation (37%) and job roles and security (41%) appeared as common triggers of stress in the literature.

Conclusions and relevance

The current literature primarily focuses on self-focused initiatives such as wellness activities, coping strategies, reliance of family, friends and work colleagues to organisational-led initiatives such as access to psychological support and training. Very limited evidence exists about the organisational interventions such as work modification, financial security and systems improvement.

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  1. Version published to 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-048861
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.08.21249468: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical Considerations: This study used secondary data analysis using published research; therefore, it did not require submission to the Research Ethics Committee.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableOverall Objectives: The overall objectives of this review are to (a) explore the triggers of occupational stress, and burnout faced by women in health care during the COVID-19 pandemic and (b) identify interventions that can support their well-being through a systematic review.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Search Methods and Information Sources: We conducted comprehensive literature search strategies in the following electronic databases: MEDLINE (via Ovid), Embase (via Ovid), CINAHL (via EBSCOhost), PsycINFO (via Ovid), and ERIC (via ProQuest).
    MEDLINE
    suggested: (MEDLINE, RRID:SCR_002185)
    Embase
    suggested: (EMBASE, RRID:SCR_001650)
    PsycINFO
    suggested: (PsycINFO, RRID:SCR_014799)
    ProQuest
    suggested: (ProQuest, RRID:SCR_006093)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.08.21249468v1 on medRxiv