Encountering Covid-19 and perceived stress and the role of a health climate among medical workers.

Due to the outbreak of Covid-19 epidemic, work stress among health sector employees has risen too high. The study aims at determining the effect of the current coronavirus epidemic in the form of stress perceived among the medical workers in Pakistan and to discover the moderating role played by a healthy climate in offsetting it. The data was collected from 255 medical workers through a self-administered online questionnaire. Multiple Hierarchical Regression was used as a tool to test the hypotheses of the study. The results obtained indicate a correlation between the pandemic and the stress caused by it among the health workers, whereas, the role of a wholesome climate in the reduction of stress among them was found lacking. Sub-hypotheses indicate that the healthy environment provided by supervisors is effective in reducing the impact of workers' handling of the Covid-19 epidemic and perceived stress, while the healthy environment provided by hospitals in general or by workgroups fails to cause such positive change. This revelation necessitates the adoption of compulsory precautionary measures on the part of relevant authorities, because increase in stress caused by the pandemic can prove more lethal than the pandemic itself. The threat of the coronavirus pandemic has emerged as a massive socio-economic challenge for the global community, especially for the developing countries like Pakistan which faces serious socio-economic challenges in the current scenario. On account of the similarity of situations, the results obtained through this study can be safely generalized to other developing countries, particularly from the South Asian region.

Understanding employees’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: The attractiveness of healthcare jobs

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of COVID-19 on the attractiveness of work in the Iraqi health sector by looking at the mediating role of employees' attitudes. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 218 health sector employees. The results revealed that there is a significant impact of COVID-19 pandemic on employees' attitudes that influence their decision to quit the health sector and look for jobs in other sectors. As health sector employees are prone to suffer the most in the pandemic, this crisis significantly affected the attractiveness of jobs in the health sector, leading to an increase in employees' negative attitudes and their desire to leave work.