Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Neuroscience, Haifa, Israel.
Emek Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, Afula, Israel.
Transl Psychiatry. 2021 Mar 15;11(1):169. doi: 10.1038/s41398-021-01299-6.
Lack of established knowledge and treatment strategies, and change in work environment, may altogether critically affect the mental health and functioning of physicians treating COVID-19 patients. Thus, we examined whether treating COVID-19 patients affect the physicians' mental health differently compared with physicians treating non-COVID-19 patients. In this cohort study, an association was blindly computed between physiologically measured anxiety and attention vigilance (collected from 1 May 2014 to 31 May 31 2016) and self-reports of anxiety, mental health aspects, and sleep quality (collected from 20 April to 30 June 2020, and analyzed from 1 July to 1 September 2020), of 91 physicians treating COVID-19 or non-COVID-19 patients. As a priori hypothesized, physicians treating COVID-19 patients showed a relative elevation in both physiological measures of anxiety (95% CI: 2317.69-2453.44 versus 1982.32-2068.46; P < 0.001) and attention vigilance (95% CI: 29.85-34.97 versus 22.84-26.61; P < 0.001), compared with their colleagues treating non-COVID-19 patients. At least 3 months into the pandemic, physicians treating COVID-19 patients reported high anxiety and low quality of sleep. Machine learning showed clustering to the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 subgroups with a high correlation mainly between physiological and self-reported anxiety, and between physiologically measured anxiety and sleep duration. To conclude, the pattern of attention vigilance, heightened anxiety, and reduced sleep quality findings point the need for mental intervention aimed at those physicians susceptible to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms, owing to the consequences of fighting at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic.
缺乏既定的知识和治疗策略，以及工作环境的变化，可能会严重影响治疗 COVID-19 患者的医生的心理健康和功能。因此，我们研究了治疗 COVID-19 患者是否会对医生的心理健康产生不同于治疗非 COVID-19 患者的影响。在这项队列研究中，我们对 91 名治疗 COVID-19 或非 COVID-19 患者的医生进行了一项盲法计算，比较了他们从 2020 年 4 月 20 日至 6 月 30 日期间自我报告的焦虑、心理健康方面和睡眠质量，以及从 2014 年 5 月 1 日至 2016 年 5 月 31 日期间生理上测量的焦虑和注意力警觉性之间的关联。根据预先假设，与治疗非 COVID-19 患者的同事相比，治疗 COVID-19 患者的生理焦虑测量值（95%CI：2317.69-2453.44 对 1982.32-2068.46；P<0.001）和注意力警觉性（95%CI：29.85-34.97 对 22.84-26.61；P<0.001）均相对升高。大流行至少 3 个月后，治疗 COVID-19 患者的医生报告焦虑程度高，睡眠质量低。机器学习显示，COVID-19 和非 COVID-19 亚组聚类，生理和自我报告的焦虑之间以及生理测量的焦虑和睡眠时间之间存在高度相关性。总之，注意力警觉性、焦虑程度升高和睡眠质量下降的模式表明，需要对那些由于在 COVID-19 大流行前线作战而容易出现创伤后应激症状的医生进行心理干预。
