Assessment of Physicians' Willingness to Work with Patients Not Yet Diagnosed with COVID-19 in a Romanian Sample.

BACKGROUND: The risk to physicians who worked with patients without confirmed COVID-19 testing during the pandemic has been little studied. However, they were at high risk. METHODS: In the summer of 2020, 1285 Romanian physicians participated in a single-center study. Participants (mean age = 48.21 years; 302 males and 982 females, all specialties) completed a series of single-item measures adapted from previous studies on work ethics and responsibility. This study used Mann-Whitney comparisons between physicians who reported that they knowingly had direct contact with COVID patients and those who did not regarding their willingness to work. RESULTS: Compared with their colleagues, physicians who reported not knowingly having direct contact with COVID patients reported less access to protective equipment, less overall willingness to respond when asked to work with infected patients, more likely to work out of fear of losing their jobs, and fear of legal repercussions. They received less training in the use of protective equipment. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians who worked with patients not yet diagnosed with COVID-19 were significantly less willing to work. The perception of invisible risk may explain the observed differences.

Physicians' Trust in Relevant Institutions during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Binary Logistic Model.

Little research has been done on professionals' perceptions of institutions and governments during epidemics. We aim to create a profile of physicians who feel they can raise public health issues with relevant institutions during a pandemic. A total of 1285 Romanian physicians completed an online survey as part of a larger study. We used binary logistic regression to profile physicians who felt they were able to raise public health issues with relevant institutions. Five predictors could differentiate between respondents who tended to agree with the trust statement and those who tended to disagree: feeling safe at work during the pandemic, considering the financial incentive worth the risk, receiving training on the use of protective equipment, having the same values as colleagues, and enjoying work as much as before the pandemic. Physicians who trusted the system to raise public health issues with the appropriate institutions were more likely to feel that they shared the same values as their colleagues, to say they were trained to use protective equipment during the pandemic, to feel that they were safe at work during the pandemic, to enjoy their work as much as before the pandemic, and to feel that the financial bonus justified the risk.