School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan.
Department of Disease Control, Faculty of Infectious & Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2021 Dec 22;16(12):e0258348. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258348. eCollection 2021.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, there have been concerns related to the preparedness of healthcare workers (HCWs). This study aimed to describe the level of awareness and preparedness of hospital HCWs at the time of the first wave.
This multinational, multicenter, cross-sectional survey was conducted among hospital HCWs from February to May 2020. We used a hierarchical logistic regression multivariate analysis to adjust the influence of variables based on awareness and preparedness. We then used association rule mining to identify relationships between HCW confidence in handling suspected COVID-19 patients and prior COVID-19 case-management training.
We surveyed 24,653 HCWs from 371 hospitals across 57 countries and received 17,302 responses from 70.2% HCWs overall. The median COVID-19 preparedness score was 11.0 (interquartile range [IQR] = 6.0-14.0) and the median awareness score was 29.6 (IQR = 26.6-32.6). HCWs at COVID-19 designated facilities with previous outbreak experience, or HCWs who were trained for dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, had significantly higher levels of preparedness and awareness (p<0.001). Association rule mining suggests that nurses and doctors who had a 'great-extent-of-confidence' in handling suspected COVID-19 patients had participated in COVID-19 training courses. Male participants (mean difference = 0.34; 95% CI = 0.22, 0.46; p<0.001) and nurses (mean difference = 0.67; 95% CI = 0.53, 0.81; p<0.001) had higher preparedness scores compared to women participants and doctors.
There was an unsurprising high level of awareness and preparedness among HCWs who participated in COVID-19 training courses. However, disparity existed along the lines of gender and type of HCW. It is unknown whether the difference in COVID-19 preparedness that we detected early in the pandemic may have translated into disproportionate SARS-CoV-2 burden of disease by gender or HCW type.
自 COVID-19 大流行开始以来，人们一直对医护人员（HCWs）的准备情况感到担忧。本研究旨在描述第一波疫情期间医院 HCWs 的意识和准备水平。
这是一项多国家、多中心、横断面调查，于 2020 年 2 月至 5 月期间在医院 HCWs 中进行。我们使用分层逻辑回归多变量分析来调整基于意识和准备情况的变量影响。然后，我们使用关联规则挖掘来识别 HCW 处理疑似 COVID-19 患者的信心与之前 COVID-19 病例管理培训之间的关系。
我们调查了来自 57 个国家的 371 家医院的 24653 名 HCWs，并收到了来自总体 70.2% HCWs 的 17302 份回复。COVID-19 准备评分中位数为 11.0（四分位距[IQR]=6.0-14.0），意识评分中位数为 29.6（IQR=26.6-32.6）。有 COVID-19 指定设施工作经验或曾接受过 SARS-CoV-2 暴发处理培训的 HCWs 的准备度和意识水平显著较高（p<0.001）。关联规则挖掘表明，对处理疑似 COVID-19 患者有“极大信心”的护士和医生参加过 COVID-19 培训课程。与女性参与者和医生相比，男性参与者（平均差异=0.34；95%CI=0.22,0.46；p<0.001）和护士（平均差异=0.67；95%CI=0.53,0.81；p<0.001）的准备评分更高。
参加过 COVID-19 培训课程的 HCWs 的意识和准备水平很高，这并不意外。但是，在性别和 HCW 类型方面存在差异。我们尚不清楚在大流行早期检测到的 COVID-19 准备程度差异是否会导致按性别或 HCW 类型不成比例地发生 SARS-CoV-2 疾病负担。
