Monitoring of self­assessment by health care workers of the quality of own life during the pandemic of acute respiratory disease caused by SARS-­CoV­-2 coronavirus in 2020

Abstract

Comparative analysis of changes in self-assessment of quality of life (QoL) indicators by young medical students during 2020 revealed certain correlations depending on the time during which they were forced to study and work against the background of the predominantly negative influence of the chronic stressful situation — the need to daily contact with different patients in conditions of many months of quarantine due to pandemic of acute respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The overall negative impact of the infectious pandemic and the resulting fears on public consciousness were quite expected. Medical workers with different clinical experiences and qualifications (nursing students and doctors), quite emotionally reacted to the potential danger of being infected with coronavirus infection due to daily professional contacts with various patients who had somatic diseases, some of which might already be in the incubation period of clinical course of coronavirus pathology. This directly reduces their self-esteem of QOL and, in certain situations, can be a factor that leads to the appearance of psychosomatic disorders in them as a kind of somatic occupational pathology, especially with prolonged (many months) continuation of lockdown restrictions due to the high level of morbidity and mortality of the population. The monitoring of changes in self-esteem of individual components of QoL turned out to be quite dependent both on the expression of individual psychological traits of each tested person and on the time of the survey (spring—late summer—winter 2020—2021).