Open AccessAn Online Survey of Healthcare Professionals in the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK:
Author(s) -
Indranil Chakravorty,
Sunil Daga,
Subodh Dave,
Subarna Chakravorty,
Geeta Me,
Neeraj Bhala,
Ramesh Mehta,
JS Bamrah
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
sushruta
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2732-5164
pISSN - 2732-5156
DOI - 10.38192/13.2.9
Subject(s) - social distance , personal protective equipment , pandemic , ethnic group , health care , medicine , covid-19 , family medicine , work (physics) , distancing , confounding , nursing , political science , mechanical engineering , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , engineering
To explore the emerging concerns of COVID-19 related issues amongst health care workers, members of a range of healthcare organisations, governmental agencies, and the media, and online self-administered survey of healthcare workers was undertaken by the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin in April 2020.ResultsThe respondents were predominantly hospital doctors (67%), aged between 40-60 years (72%) and from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnicity (BAME) backgrounds in the UK (86%). Thirty percent of respondents had one or more vulnerable comorbidities. Over 78% reported either lack of, or inappropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for their role and 68% of respondents felt that they were unable to comply with or that it was impractical to adhere to social distancing at work (including commuting). At the time of the survey, 18.5% of respondents reported having a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. In multivariate analysis, the BAME community emerged as an independent risk factor (OR 1.45) for COVID-19 when adjusted for confounding factors.ConclusionsThese results add to the emerging concerns expressed internationally on the observation that BAME ethnicity appears to have a higher risk of developing COVID-19. This is the first study that adjusted work-related factors (inability to maintain social distancing and inadequate PPE) and comorbidities. Our work supports the imperative for designing and conducting urgent larger studies to understand this risk and plan appropriate mitigation of the risks to health care workers