Prevalence of anxiety among healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic: a meta-analysis / 预防医学

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To systematically investigate the prevalence of anxiety among healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, so as to provide the development of evidence-based psychological interventions among healthcare professionals.@*Methods@#The publications pertaining to the prevalence of anxiety among healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic were retrieved in national and international electronic databases from January 1, 2020 through November 30, 2021, including CNKI, Wanfang Data, VIP, SinoMed, PubMed and Web of Science. The quality of publications was evaluated using the United States Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) quality assessment of included cross-sectional studies, and the pooled prevalence of anxiety was estimated among healthcare professionals using the software Open Meta Analyst version 3.0. The publication bias were evaluated with funnel plots and Begg rank correlation test.@*Results@#Totally 598 publications were retrieved, and 36 eligible publications were enrolled in the final analysis, including 33 Chinese publications and 3 English publications. There were 5 high-quality, 29 moderate-quality and 2 low-quality publications. All investigations pertaining to the prevalence of anxiety among healthcare professionals were conducted in 2020. Totally 19 872 healthcare professionals were investigated, and the prevalence of anxiety was 28.8% (95%CI 24.0%-33.6%). Subgroup analysis showed that the prevalence of anxiety was 31.9% (95%CI 17.6%-46.2%) among healthcare professionals from western China, 29.6% (95%CI (17.8%-41.4%) from central China, and 25.3% (95%CI 20.2%-30.3%) from eastern China. The prevalence of anxiety was 4.9% (95%CI 3.3%-6.4%) among male healthcare professionals and 22.9% (95%CI 17.7%-28.0%) among male healthcare professionals, and the prevalence of anxiety was 21.6% (95%CI 13.2%-29.9%) among nurses, 5.2% (95%CI 2.8%-7.5%) among doctors and 4.8% (95%CI 2.2%-7.4%) among other healthcare professionals. The prevalence of mild, moderate and severe anxiety was 18.6% (95%CI 14.0%-23.2%), 5.5% (95%CI 4.1%-6.8%) and 1.9% (95%CI 1.3%-2.5%), respectively. No publication bias was detected as revealed by funnel plots and Begg rank correlation test, and stable meta-analysis results and heterogeneity test were observed.@*Conclusions@#The prevalence of anxiety is 28.8% among healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, and mild anxiety is predominant. A high prevalence rate of anxiety is seen female healthcare professionals and nurses, who should be given a high priority and timely psychological interventions: