Perceived stress, burnout and compassion fatigue among frontline health workers during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background: Among all groups, frontline health workers are at high risk of work-related stress, burnout and secondary traumatic stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Objectives: To assess the level of perceived stress, burnout, compassion fatigue, to see the association of these variables and to predict the value of the perceived stress and burnout for compassion fatigue among frontline health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Method: The study was a web-based cross-sectional study on 79 participants who were working as frontline health workers in any organization/hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Participants were included in the study using the snowball sampling method. To assess perceived stress, compassion fatigue and burnout, Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale and Compassion Fatigue/Satisfaction self-test were used. Results: About 50.6% had moderate stress, 65.8% of total participants had an extremely low risk of burnout and 51.9% had an extremely high risk of compassion fatigue. The result showed a positive correlation between perceived stress and compassion fatigue (0.46), burnout and compassion fatigue (0.78), perceived stress and burnout (0.55) at p<.01. Considering the finding of this study it is concluded that major steps need to be taken to improve the mental health of the frontline health care workers during the pandemic. To improve the current scenario of health care workers in regards to mental health, several steps need to be taken e. g. policy-making could be a good step, psychological intervention can be given to those health care workers who need it.

Keywords: COVID-19, perceived stress, burnout, compassion fatigue, frontline health worker