MENTAL HEALTH OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AT EMERGENCY CARE UNITS (UPAs) IN NATAL - RN IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19
COVID-19; health personnel; psychological burnout; depression ; anxiety disorders.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had serious implications for individual and collective health and emotional and social functioning. At the same time, it triggered an overload on health systems around the world, directly affecting the mental health of health professionals, especially professionals in the urgent and emergency sectors who have higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression than the general population. In this sense, the present study proposes to analyze the prevalence and factors associated with mental illness among workers at Emergency Care Units in Natal-RN. This is a cross-sectional quantitative study, aimed at nurses, nursing technicians/assistants and physicians at the 04 Emergency Care Units in Natal-RN. The collection was carried out from July to December 2022 with the application of questionnaires, which contain socio-occupational data, personal clinical health data and personal and family history of mental disorders and specific questionnaires Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI -HSS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). The questionnaires were sent via whattsapp or accessed via QR code and answered after signing the Free and Informed Consent Form through the Google® forms platform. 172 participants were included in the survey. The sample consisted of 82% women, with a mean age of 39.63 years (SD 9.521) and mean time since graduation was 11.9 years (SD 7.68). The prevalence of Burnout in the sample was 51,2% and, 47.1% had high Emotional Exhaustion, 27.9% high Depersonalization and 24.4% low Personal Fulfillment. Regarding to anxiety symptoms, 28.5% had moderate to severe anxiety symptoms and the prevalence of depressive symptoms was 16 .3%. In view of the results found, it is urgent to create government actions that act at the management, organizational and individual levels to prevent new injuries in frontline health professionals, as well as in the treatment of disorders.