AUTHOR=Song Wei , Huang Dongmei , Yu Jiejing 

TITLE=How does centralized isolation treatment strategy affect the medical staff's mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic?

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1055564

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2022.1055564

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=Background: During the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Chinese Government adopted a centralized isolation treatment (CIT) strategy for patients, which has greatly improved the efficiency of the pandemic response. However, compared to those in local hospitals, anti-COVID-19 medical staff in mobile cabin hospitals, where the CIT strategy was adopted, suffered more mental health problems. This study aimed to explore how the CIT strategy affected the medical staff’s mental health by comparing anti-COVID-19 medical staff who worked in mobile cabin hospitals to those in fever clinics of local hospitals.
Method: Following the standard scale development procedure, this study first developed a scale measuring the mental health of anti-COVID-19 medical staff. In the main investigation, a survey method using the developed scale was used, and 839 anti-COVID-19 medical staff in China were recruited as participants. The first survey was conducted in February 2020, when the first round of COVID-19 was at a serious time. In April 2020, after the first round of COVID-19 in China was initially contained, and medical staff who worked in mobile cabin hospitals returned to local hospitals, a follow-up survey was conducted on these participants.
Results: The reliability and validity of the developed scale were desirable. The mental health problems of anti-COVID-19 medical staff were mainly manifested as anxiety, powerlessness, fear of infection, and somatization. Compared to those who worked in local hospitals, anti-COVID-19 medical staff who worked in mobile cabin hospitals where the CIT strategy was adopted suffered more powerlessness, fear of infection, and somatization. After returning to local hospitals, symptoms of fear of infection and powerlessness of medical staff who used to work in mobile cabin hospitals decreased significantly. However, their anxiety symptoms were not relieved, and their somatization symptoms even increased.
Conclusion: This study implied that the mental health of anti-COVID-19 medical staff in mobile cabin hospitals adopting CIT was worse than in local hospitals. Moreover, with the first outbreak in remission, the mental health recovery of medical staff in CIT hospitals was slower than in local hospitals.