Prevalence and Factors of Anxiety During the Coronavirus-2019 Pandemic Among Teachers in Saudi Arabia.

Background: Teachers play a central role in successful education. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, regular in-person attendance in classes at all levels of education has been disrupted for more than 1 year in many countries. These lockdowns, which include the discontinuation of in person learning at schools and universities has presented a significant challenge for teachers to adapt to online teaching. Given this rapid format change, occupational anxiety levels among educators has increased. Objective: The primary objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of anxiety among teachers in Saudi Arabia. A secondary objective was to explore characteristics of teachers associated with the level of anxiety level during the period of lockdown. Methods: An anonymous, online cross-sectional study was carried for 3 months (February 2021 through April 2021). The questionnaire consisted of four sections and included the Generalized Anxiety Disorder instrument (GAD-7). Chi-square tests were completed for categorical comparisons while binary logistic regressions were used for associative relationship exploration. The IRB at King Saudi University Medical City, Saudi Arabia approved this study. Results: A total of 742 respondents completed the survey yielding an anxiety prevalence of 58.2 % among teachers. Medium degree of statistically significant differences identified as marital status (p = 0.046). women had higher anxiety (65.3%) than men (34.7%) but gender with anxiety was low degree of statistical significance compared with non-anxiety status (p = 0.697). The odds of anxiety among middle teachers was twice (OR = 2.01) as high as the odds of anxiety among other levels of teacher (p = 0.01, 95% CI 0.94-4.26). Conclusions: This study identified that many teachers experienced anxiety during the lockdown, especially women and middle school teachers. Future studies should identify contributing factors to estimate the magnitude of the exposure to anxiety between different types of teachers to help establish better preventive measures based on the workplace environment.

Role of pharmacist during COVID-19 pandemic: A retrospective study focused on critically ill COVID-19 patients.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: During the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, there has been a huge demand for medications and unprecedented utilization of intensive care unit (ICU) services that subsequently and profoundly impacted the quality of medical care provided to COVID-19 patients. This study aimed to shed light on the role of pharmacists on the health care provided to critically ill COVID-19 patients. METHODS: A retrospective study, was conducted in Diriyah hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on all COVID-19 patients admitted to the ICU between June 27th and August 15th, 2020 until patients were transferred to the medical ward, discharged, or deceased. All medication related interventions performed by pharmacists have been documented electronically, collected and subsequently categorized and analyzed. RESULTS: The mean age of patients was 58.8 years (±12.98 SD), with age of >64 years in approximately 37%. Four hundred and seventy interventions (470) were made by pharmacists of which 32%, 11.7%, 4%, 2.6%, 2.1% were due to error in dosing regimens, drug duplication, missing drug information, drugs requiring prior authorization, and missing critical information, respectively; while 40.6% were due to medication shortage of which 40.3% were substituted with alternative medications. Based on the analysis of drugs involved in interventions, medication groups that were mainly associated with interventions included antibiotics (16.8%), electrolytes/minerals (11.7%) and vitamins (9.4%). CONCLUSION: During health crises such as COVID-19 pandemic, the role of pharmacists in the ICU services becomes extremely crucial for providing better patients' outcomes. Further studies should be conducted to follow up these findings in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.