A Study on the Correlation between Stressors and Psychological Behaviors of Nurses in Support of COVID-19 Ward

Abstract

COVID-19 has been a hot topic of research in medical journals. There are many articles which have been published on the genetic sequencing, pathology and other medical conditions associated with COVID-19, however, there are very few articles which acknowledge the psychological and behavioral aspects of front-line medical workers especially nurses. The purpose of the study is to understand the stressors, psychological behavior status and the correlation between psychological behavior and stressors for nurses who served in COVID-19 ward. The general information questionnaire, the nurse job stressor scale in Chinese, and the emergency public health incident questionnaire were used to survey 282 nurses in Jingzhou Central Hospital who supported COVID-19 ward. The result shows that the average work stress of nurses in this study was 1.40 ± 0.54 points. The top 3 dimensions were conceptual stress (1.67 ± 0.68), working environment stress (1.57 ± 0.60), and occupational hazard stress (1.57 ± 0.66). With different marital status, the average scores of stress are different, and the difference is statistically significant (t = 2.139, P = 0.034). For nurses in COVID-19 ward who faced sudden public health crisis, the self-evaluated psychological score of nurses in COVID-19 ward averages 1.40 with a deviation of 0.54. In our study, fear had the highest influence on psychological behavior, while the lowest was the compulsive-anxiety factor. There was a positive correlation between the stressor scores and the psychological behavior scores (P < 0.01). The conclusion is that the pressure of nurses supporting COVID-19 ward is under moderate pressure, and the psychological behavior is moderately responded with a few nurses having psychological behavior deviation.