Psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare professionals in the Al Ahsa Region, Saudi Arabia

Background
Recently, researchers have shown increased interest in the psychological effect of the pandemic on healthcare workers, as well as on the general population.

Objectives
We aimed to investigate the incidence of adverse psychological effects, such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, experienced by medical staff and healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Material and methods
This is a cross-sectional survey, in which participants were invited to take part in the study by completing a questionnaire. The survey gathered information on demographic data, symptoms of the Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scales (DASS-21) and the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R) tool.

Results
The total and subscale of DAS-21 showed that 54.8% of all participants showed signs of depression, (60.1%) anxiety and (59.4%) stress. The faculty member of medicine was substantially correlated with the DASS-21 subscale depression and anxiety. In addition, the stress subscale of the DASS-21 was substantially higher with a medical intern. Similarly, the findings obtained from the preliminary study of participants who encountered or were exposed to COVID-19 patients had significantly higher stress subscale ratings in the Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scales. In addition, the married participants were correlated with higher scores in the (IES-R) tool.

Conclusions
More than half of the participants in this study encountered mild to extreme psychological effects during the pandemic. This investigation’s findings indicate that working in the medical profession (medical staff members and medical interns) is associated with depression, anxiety and stress.