Impacts of Pandemics on Healthcare Workers in Teaching Hospitals in Rivers State, Nigeria: Perspective from Healthcare Workers’ Experience during Pandemics

Background: Pandemics are wide-ranging incidences of infectious diseases that significantly increase morbidity and mortality in extensive geographic area. The study assessed impacts of pandemics experienced by healthcare workers in teaching hospitals in Rivers State, Nigeria.

Materials and Methods: This study was conducted among healthcare workers in teaching hospitals (University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH) and Rivers State University Teaching Hospital (RSUTH) in Rivers State Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling method was adopted to recruit 754 healthcare workers into the study, and a descriptive cross-sectional study design was used. A structured questionnaire was developed and pre-tested. The reliability of the questionnaire for this study was performed with the index of internal consistency and was calculated with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient which gave a considerable value of 0.72. The responses gotten from the participants were entered into, and analysed with IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 25. Ethical clearance to conduct the study was gotten from the Research and Ethics Committee of the University of Port Harcourt. Informed consents were obtained from each of the participants.

Results: Most (62.2%) of the participants experienced psychological impact of pandemics, (59.4%) of the participants experienced emotional impact of pandemics, (54.5%) of the participants experienced financial impact of pandemics and the overall (58.2%) of experienced impact of pandemics on the HCWs was obtained. Also, the result revealed a statistically significant association between marital (p=0.0001), sex (p=0.003), religion (p=0.0001), level of education completed (p=0.039), income (p=0.0001), professional category (p=0.0001), duration of work (p=0.0001) and overall experienced impact of pandemics on the participants. We predicted that among the participants, marital status, sex, religion, education, income professional category, and work duration at (p≤ 0.05), significantly contributed to the level of experienced impact of pandemics among the participants.

Conclusion: Majority of the healthcare workers reported impact of pandemics. However, psychological impact of the pandemics was most prevalent impact experienced by the healthcare workers who took part in this study. The level of impact of pandemics experienced by the health workers were substantially influenced by their socio-demographic characteristics. We recommend hospital management should improve the work setting and provide necessary support to the workers. Also, the healthcare workers should participant trainings on coping strategies during pandemics.