Fatigue and quality of life of health professionals in Primary Care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an important discussion about the health of primary health care workers who are subject to physical and psychological distress, which may initially be expressed by fatigue and change in quality of life.

OBJECTIVES

To verify the correlation between fatigue and quality of life of primary health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil inland.

METHODS

Cross-sectional, quantitative study, with the application of three questionnaires: social and demographic; Fatigue Perception Questionnaire; World Health Organization Quality of Life instrument-Abbreviated version. Statistical analysis comparing two or more groups and correlation adopting a significance level of p < 0.05.

RESULTS

It included 50 professionals with a mean age of 40.7 ± 9.6 years. High fatigue was evidenced (68.2 ± 17.2 points), and married individuals had a higher level of fatigue than single individuals (p = 0.003). There was also a high general average score in quality of life (85.27 ± 9.6 points), especially in workers with higher education (p = 0.03), as well as in non-smoking professionals (p = 0.02), with higher household income (p = 0.04) and in singles (p = 0.01). Therefore, the correlation was inverse and moderate between fatigue and quality of life (R = -0.44).

CONCLUSIONS

We found a high level of fatigue and quality of life and an inverse correlation. The results show convergences and divergences with the scientific literature, indicating the need for more studies with primary health care workers.