Risk of COVID-19-related bullying, harassment and stigma among healthcare workers: an analytical cross-sectional global study.
BMJ Open
; 10(12): e046620, 2020 12 30.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1004175
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES:
Essential healthcare workers (HCW) uniquely serve as both COVID-19 healers and, potentially, as carriers of SARS-CoV-2. We assessed COVID-19-related stigma and bullying against HCW controlling for social, psychological, medical and community variables.DESIGN:
We nested an analytical cross-sectional study of COVID-19-related stigma and bullying among HCW within a larger mixed-methods effort assessing COVID-19-related lived experience and impact. Adjusted OR (aOR) and 95% CIs evaluated the association between working in healthcare settings and experience of COVID-19-related bullying and stigma, controlling for confounders. Thematic qualitative analysis provided insight into lived experience of COVID-19-related bullying.SETTING:
We recruited potential participants in four languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian) through Amazon Mechanical Turk's online workforce and Facebook.PARTICIPANTS:
Our sample included 7411 people from 173 countries who were aged 18 years or over.FINDINGS:
HCW significantly experienced more COVID-19-related bullying after controlling for the confounding effects of job-related, personal, geographic and sociocultural variables (aOR 1.5; 95% CI 1.2 to 2.0). HCW more frequently believed that people gossip about others with COVID-19 (OR 2.2; 95% CI 1.9 to 2.6) and that people with COVID-19 lose respect in the community (OR 2.3; 95% CI 2.0 to 2.7), both which elevate bullying risk (OR 2.7; 95% CI 2.3 to 3.2, and OR 3.5; 95% CI 2.9 to 4.2, respectively). The lived experience of COVID-19-related bullying relates frequently to public identities as HCW traverse through the community, intersecting with other domains (eg, police, racism, violence).INTERPRETATION:
After controlling for a range of confounding factors, HCW are significantly more likely to experience COVID-19-related stigma and bullying, often in the intersectional context of racism, violence and police involvement in community settings.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Violence
/
Health Personnel
/
Bullying
/
Social Stigma
/
Racism
/
Occupational Stress
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
English
Journal:
BMJ Open
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Bmjopen-2020-046620
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