Introduction:

The fast spread of COVID-19 around the world caused health systems collapse, which contributed to increase fatigue suffered by health workers, physical as well as mental.

Objective:

To determine psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic on health professionals.

Methods:

A multicenter cross-sectional study was carried out in 145 subjects who worked as health professionals from January to December 2021. This information was collected in an online form. Age, sex, medical record, institution, work category, daily access to COVID-19 information, direct assistance to infected patients and close people death was considered parameters in the applied form. Mann-Whitney U test was applied to find differences in the overall reported score.

Results:

62.1% of health workers presented a High Psychological Impact, 70.0% were medical and nursing staff; 62.2% accessed to information about COVID-19 for more than 2 hours daily, 64.4% assisted infected patients directly, and 35.6% experienced close people death due to the pandemic. Being a woman (p= 0,008), accessing information about COVID-19 for more than 2 hours daily (p= 0,026), directly assisting infected patients (p= 0,033), and the death of close people (p= 0,018) had statistically significant differences in psychological impact.

Conclusions:

The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with a high psychological impact in health workers.

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