Pandemic management impacts Slovak health care workers’ quality of life during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

by Veronika Pacutova, Andrea Madarasova Geckova, Peter Kizek, Sara Maria Majernikova, Andrea F. de Winter, Sijmen A. Reijneveld

The COVID-19 pandemic led to accepting a lot of various protective pandemic management-related measures (PanMan), which may have had a large impact on health care workers (HCWs) but evidence is scarce. We therefore explored the impact of measures during the second wave. We assessed the associations of PanMan with the Quality of Life (QoL) of hospital HCWs.

We collected data from 215 HCWs (77.7% females, mean age 44.4), who were working at the COVID-related departments of one large hospital in eastern Slovakia via a questionnaire, specifically developed in direct collaboration with them. We assessed PanMan related factors, such as COVID-19 experience, information overload, non-adherence of the public, work stress, barriers and facilitators of health care provision, and QoL related factors, such as impact on family life and activities, housekeeping, relationships with relatives and mental well-being. To analyse the data, we used logistic regression models adjusted for age and gender.

PanMan greatly impacted the QoL of HCWs, in particular family life, housekeeping and mental well-being (odds ratio, 6.8–2.2). The most influential PanMan factors were COVID-19 experience (3.6–2.3), work stress (4.1–2.4) and barriers in health care provision (6.8–2.2). Perceiving work stress had a negative impact on all QoL domains, even on relationships with the greatest impact. Conversely, the PanMan factors reducing the negative impact on QoL were training and colleagues’ support (0.4–0.1).

PanMan had a strong negative impact on the QoL of hospital HCWs during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.