Comparison during 2020 and 2022 mental and physical symptoms impacting cleaners, nurses, and managers dealing with COVID-19 areas. What has changed, are the symptoms still there?

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 cases was reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, as a pneumonia from an unknown caused. By January 30, 2020, there were already 7,734 positive cases in several provinces of China, and by April 18, the virus was confirmed in 198 countries (Shaukat, Ali and Razzak, 2020), by May 2022, cases were above 3.5 million, and fatalities above 12,000 (World Health Organization, 2022). Methods: The targeted employees are managers, nurses/ healthcare, and cleaners, which are considered the people that are in longer contact with the patients. I used for the quantitative method a survey, for 6 weeks 52 employees were engaged in it, employees from departments that have been in contact with covid since the beginning of the pandemic until now. As for the interviews, these were done for 2 weeks, where I was able to speak with 4 different people. The manager who runs cleaners in covid areas, 2 cleaners of covid areas, a nurse of covid area. Results: Practices implemented by the Hospital to ease the process for FHCWs, where most of the participants experienced severe psychological and physical symptoms during 2020 such as anxiety, uncertainty, fatigue, burnout, loneliness, insomnia, nightmares, transpiration, chest pain, panic breakdowns, and gastrointestinal problems. Also, skin problems related to the use of PPE. Symptoms ease as the same time as government measures ease and allowed to engage in their regular routine to decompress. Limitations: The results only represented a small sample of workers, the availability of participants was a factor because during the data collection, workload was quite heavy. Conclusions: COVID-19 impacted negatively psychologically and physically to workers during 2020, as for now symptoms are gathered on low levels, mostly related to the current affluence of the Hospital during winter.