| Abstract |
Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic may be a medical disease, but it has also negatively impacted the mental health of the general population and health professionals. The present study examined the stress levels of 150 first-line primary care health professionals in Patra, Greece during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Aim: The aim of this master's thesis was to study the stress levels of 150 primary care health professionals in Patra, Greece during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Participants and Method: The study was cross-sectional and data collection took place during the period of February-March 2022. Three instruments were used to measure work characteristics and conditions, Covid-19 stress factors, and perceived stress level of health professionals. The first was the UK’s Health and Safety Executive’s (n.d.) Standards Management Tool, which measures 7 dimensions of work characteristics and working conditions. In addition, stress factors of health professionals associated with the new Covid-19 conditions were adapted from the study by Weibelzahl et al. (2021), while to measure stress, the Stress Perception Scale PSS-14 was used (Cohen et al., 1983; Katsarou et al., 2012). The Cronbach reliability of the instruments was measured and the corresponding dimensions were calculated, while the potential effects of demographic, occupational and pandemic-related factors on the self-reported stress levels of first-line health professionals, were examined using non-parametric tests as per the results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality testing (Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney και Spearman correlations).
Results: First-line health professionals had moderate levels of stress, that were neither low nor high, with a mean of 24.35 on a stress scale from 0 (absence of anxiety) to 56 (severe anxiety). The education level alone had a statistically significant effect on health professionals’ stress levels (p < 0,01), while other characteristics like employment and work experience in the health sector did not affect reported stress levels (p > 0,05). Stress had a statistically significant negative relationship with all 7 characteristics and working conditions of health professionals – namely, good role understanding, good interpersonal relationships and communication, support from supervisor and organization, support from colleagues, personal control over the work, work requirements, and organization and change in the hospital/health unit (p < 0,01). In addition, the 7 dimensions of characteristics and working conditions significantly predicted the stress levels of first-line health professionals during Covid-19 (all p < 0,01). Finally, occupational stress reported by first-line health professionals was significantly and positively correlated with stressors due to the new conditions of Covid-19 (p < 0,01), and Covid-19 stressors significantly predicted the level of self-reported stress (p < 0,01).
Conclusions: The main conclusion of the study was that first-line health professionals reported moderate levels of stress. One possible explanation for the reduced stress levels recorded compared to previous studies was that health professionals, having experienced the new adverse conditions that developed at their work because of Covid-19 during the past two years, have learned to adapt to their work stressors, with the high levels of stress reported at the start of the pandemic and during lock-down periods, appearing to have been reduced in 2022.
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