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BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the mental health and well-being of health care workers (HCWs). This study examined mental health outcomes and COVID-related stress impacts among a diverse sample of ambulatory HCWs, including clinicians and support staff, as well as the associations between mental health outcomes and work impairments in this population. Detailing these results can help in designing interventions to alleviate this burden. METHODS: "The Health Care Worker Stress Survey" was administered to ambulatory care providers and support staff at three multispecialty care delivery organizations as part of an online, cross-sectional study conducted between June 8, 2020, and July 13, 2020. RESULTS: The greatest stress impact reported by HCWs was the uncertainty regarding when the COVID-19 outbreak would be under control, while the least reported concern was about self-dying from COVID-19. Differences in COVID-19 stress impacts were observed by age, gender, and occupational risk factors. Approximately 50% of participants reported more than a minimal level of anxiety, including 22.5% who indicated moderate to severe levels of anxiety. Higher levels of anxiety were observed with younger ages and female gender, while occupational roles with increased exposure risk did not report higher levels of anxiety. Roughly two-thirds of the sample reported less than good sleep quality and one-third to one-half of the sample reported other sleep related problems that differed by age and gender. Role limitations due to emotional health correlated with COVID-19 related stress, anxiety and sleep problems. CONCLUSIONS: Using established, validated measures, we quantified mental health outcomes within a diverse sample of ambulatory care HCWs during the pandemic. Younger and female HCWs reported greater anxiety burden; HCWs with higher occupational risk of COVID exposure did not report higher levels of anxiety. Notable proportions of HCWs reported sleep and work impairments. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, it is difficult to attribute these patterns to the pandemic. These results underscore the depth and extent of mental health outcomes in HCWs in ambulatory settings and raise important questions on new interventions to relieve that burden. Further research is needed to study specific interventions to support the mental health and wellbeing of HCWs.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Some educators have expressed concern about the quality of inpatient training received by family practice residents in community-based residency programs because of insufficient patient numbers and resources in those programs. This study compared the number, diagnoses, and lengths of stay of patients seen by first-year family practice residents in a large inner-city, university-based medical center's internal medicine service versus those in a family practice teaching service in a smaller, community-based suburban regional hospital. METHODS: The adult inpatient training services of the two training sites were compared for 6 months to determine if any differences existed between the sites in patients'age, gender, primary and secondary diagnoses, average length of hospital stay, or in the number of monthly admissions. RESULTS: A total of 247 patients were admitted to the teaching service of the suburban community hospital, while 317 patients were admitted to the teaching service at the university hospital. The average length of stay for the suburban hospital was 6.1 days and 5.7 days at the university hospital. A total of 107 different diagnoses were made on admission at Kenner Regional Medical Center, while 90 were made at University Hospital. Chest pain/angina was the most frequent diagnosis encountered at admission at both hospitals. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the two inpatient services studied, a broad variety of diagnoses and patient demographics are encountered at community-based hospitals, with similar numbers of patients, lengths of stay, and variation in diagnoses in comparison to an urban-based university hospital. The results indicate that there can be adequate numbers of patients and diagnostic variability to permit effective inpatient teaching at community-based hospitals.
