The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Mental Health of Health Care Workers (Literature Review)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a serious psychological impact on healthcare workers. There is an operational restructuring of medical institutions, the working conditions practically correspond to an emergency situation. Every day, medical workers receive a huge amount of new information in the form of orders, guidelines. This creates an additional load in the form of continuous "information noise". The problem of emotional burnout of doctors was acute even before the COVID-19 pandemic. According to numerous studies in different countries, almost half of doctors have high rates of emotional burnout, which is two times higher than those of the population employed in other areas of professional activity. The aim of the study is to review the theoretical and methodological foundations of the formation and development of emotional burnout in medical personnel during an increased epidemic threshold for a new coronavirus infection. The paper provides an analysis of literary sources devoted to the problem of burnout syndrome in medical workers presented in the Scientific electronic library eLibrary, as well as in the English-language textual database of medical and biological publications PubMed. The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with many reasons that can adversely affect the formation and development of emotional burnout in medical personnel during an increased epidemic threshold for a new coronavirus infection. The provoking factors of the burnout syndrome (professional burnout) are the organizational factor (high workload, lack and shortage of PPE, insufficient (at the first stage) accumulated knowledge about the new coronavirus infection COVID-19); feeling of safety, threat and risk of infection; social isolation.