Introduction: Early in the epidemic of coronavirus disease 2019, the Chinese government recruited a proportion of healthcare workers to support the designated hospital (Huoshenshan Hospital) in Wuhan, China. The majority of front-line medical staff suffered from adverse effects, but their real health status during COVID-19 epidemic was still unknown. The aim of the study was to explore the latent relationship of the physical and mental health of front-line medical staff during this special period.
Methods: A total of 115 military medical staff were recruited between February 17th and February 29th, 2020 and asked to complete questionnaires assessing socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, self-reported sleep status, fatigue, resilience and anxiety.
Results: 55 medical staff worked within Intensive Care and 60 worked in Non-intensive Care, the two groups were significantly different in reported general fatigue, physical fatigue and tenacity (P<0.05). Gender, duration working in Wuhan, current perceived stress level and health status were associated with significant differences in fatigue scores (P<0.05), the current perceived health status (P<0.05) and impacted on the resilience and anxiety of participants. The structural equation modeling analysis revealed resilience was negatively associated with fatigue (β=-0.52, P<0.01) and anxiety (β=-0.24, P<0.01), and fatigue had a direct association with the physical burden (β=0.65, P<0.01); Fatigue mediated the relationship between resilience and anxiety (β=-0.305, P=0.039) as well as resilience and physical burden (β=-0.276, P=0.02).
Conclusion: During an explosive pandemic situation, motivating the effect of protective resilience and taking tailored interventions against fatigue are promising ways to protect the physical and mental health of the front-line medical staff.
Keywords: AGFI, The adjusted goodness-of fit-index; ANOVA, Analysis of variance; Anxiety; CD-RISC, The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale; CFI, The comparative fit index; COVID-19; COVID-19, Coronavirus Disease 2019; Fatigue; Front-line medical staff; GF, General Fatigue; GFI, The goodness-of-fit index; IFI, The incremental fit index; MF, Mental Fatigue; MFI-20, The Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory; NFI, The normal fit index; PCFI, The parsimany-adjusted comparative fit index; PF, Physical Fatigue; PNFI, The parsimany-adjusted normal fit index; RA, Reduced Activity; RM, Reduced Motivation; RMSEA, The root mean square error of approximation; Resilience; SARS, Severe acute respiratory syndrome; SARS-CoV-2, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2; SAS, The Self-Rating Anxiety Scale; SEM, Structural equation modeling; SRSS, The Self-Rating Scale of Sleep; Structural equation modeling; TLI, The Tucker-Lewis index; WHO, World Health Organization.
© 2021 Published by Elsevier GmbH.