Saúde mental e qualidade de vida dos fisioterapeutas: comparação entre assistência e não assistência a casos de COVID-19, 2023

Abstract

Introduction: In December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), began, with the first cases being diagnosed in central China, in Wuhan. This global public health emergency not only brought consequences regarding the rapid spread of cases of the disease and high number of deaths, but also questions about the mental health and quality of life of health professionals during the pandemic due to the overload of work. work, fear of contamination, overcrowding of assistance services, many deaths in a short period of time, among other factors. Objective: To analyze the mental health and quality of life of two groups of physiotherapists, those who worked with patients with COVID-19 and those who worked with patients without COVID-19, in public health services in the city of Uberaba-MG. Material and method: Observational, cross-sectional, quantitative study. The sample consisted of physiotherapists from the SUS care services, with a group consisting of those who treated patients with COVID-19, and the control group of those who did not treat patients with COVID-19. Three instruments were used: one to characterize the sociodemographic and occupational profile, the Self-Report Questionnaire (SRQ-20) to track the presence of common mental disorders and the World Health Organization Quality of life-bref (WHOQOL-bref) to assess quality of life. The characterization of the sociodemographic and occupational profile occurred using absolute and relative frequency distributions for categorical variables and measures of central tendency for continuous variables. Each instrument was analyzed according to the recommendations in their respective validation and/or syntax articles. For the comparison of quantitative variables, the t-Student test was applied, under the assumption of normality, verified by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and homogeneity of variances, verified by the Levene test. When the assumption was not observed, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was applied. A value of p≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: 61 physiotherapists participated, 55.7% who treated patients with COVID-19 and 44.3% who did not (control group). Of the total, 88.5% were women, 39.3% aged between 31 and 40 years, 70.5% were married or had a partner. Regarding coping factors during the pandemic, 86.9% of participants reported having received training on COVID-19, 86.9% had sufficient personal protective equipment available, and 47.5% became infected with COVID-19. Comparing the groups, there was a statistically significant difference in terms of working time at the institution, monthly income and workload, with physiotherapists who treated patients with COVID-19 working at the institution for less time (p=0.0020), received lower wages (p=0.0050), increased their workload during the pandemic (p=0.002) and worked extra shifts (p=0.006). Regarding the results of the SRQ-20 and WHOQOL-bref questionnaires, 47.1% of the physiotherapists who treated patients with COVID-19 and 55.6% of the control group had common mental disorders, a statistically non-significant difference between the groups. And in all domains of the WHOQOL-bref, higher mean scores were observed among physiotherapists who did not treat patients with COVID-19, however this difference was not statistically significant between groups. Conclusion: There was a statistically significant relationship between shorter working time at the institution, lower monthly income, longer workload and higher proportion of physiotherapists who treated patients with COVID-19. Regarding the prevalence of common mental disorders and measurement of quality of life, there was no statistically significant difference between groups.