Women in Health Care Experiencing Occupational Stress and Burnout during COVID-19: A Review (preprint)

ABSTRACT

ContextCOVID-19 has had an unprecedent impact on physicians, nurses, and other health professionals around the world, and a serious health care burnout crisis is emerging as a result of this pandemic. ObjectivesWe aim to identify the causes of occupational stress and burnout in women in medicine, nursing, and other health professions during the COVID-19 pandemic and interventions that can support female health professionals deal with this crisis through a rapid review. MethodsWe searched MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and ERIC from December 2019 through September 30, 2020. The review protocol was registered in PROSPERO and is available online. We selected all empirical studies that discussed stress and burnout in women health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. ResultsThe literature search identified 6148 citations. A review of abstracts led to the retrieval of 721 full-text articles for assessment, of which 47 articles were included for review. Our findings show that concerns of safety (65%), staff and resource adequacy (43%), workload and compensation (37%), job roles and security (41%) appeared as common triggers of stress in the literature. Conclusions and RelevanceThe current literature primarily focuses on self-focused initiatives such as wellness activities, coping strategies, reliance of family, friends and work colleagues to organizational led initiatives such as access to psychological support and training. Very limited evidence exists about the organizational interventions such as work modification, financial security, and systems improvement.