A Study of Resilience and Coping Skills in Doctors During Covid-19 Pandemic in Kalaburagi

Introduction: On March 11, 2020, the virus, SARS-CoV-2, was declared the COVID-19 pandemic by the WHO.2 The negativities related with COVID-19 on healthcare employees, including the disease burden on the healthcare system, as well as the infection risk can be considered as the important effects of this global pandemic. The career of a doctor can be very demanding especially in the time of a pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak forces doctors around the world to make difficult decisions and work under extreme pressure. Aims & objectives 1. To measure resilience in doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic 2. To assess the coping skills among doctors amid the COVID-19 outbreak. 3.To assess the impact of demographic variables on these factors. Materials & methods: An online cross-sectional survey using Google forms. Sample size: 300 Instruments: The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) comprises of six items to assess the ability to bounce back or to recover from stress (Smith et al, 2008). Items 1, 3 and 5 are positively worded, and items 2, 4 and 6 are negatively worded. Items are scored on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 to 5. The Brief-COPE scale consists of the 28-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure effective and ineffective ways to cope with a stressful life event. Each question has a 4-point Likert item. Following are the 4-point Likert item scores based on individual experience. Results: Out of 350 doctors, 268 of them had responded to our questionnaire. The demographic details of the study participants and their responses were analyzed by using descriptive analysis. Majority of the participating doctors were aged between 18 to 30 years, accounting for about (223)83.2%, followed by the participants aged between 31 to 40 years with the incidence of 28/268 (10.5%). 12/268(4.5%) and 5/268(1.8%) were aged 41 to 50 and >50 years respectively.  There were 144 male and 124 female doctors present in the study. Out of 268 doctors present in the study, 206(76.9%) were unmarried and only 62 (23.1%) of them were married. After analysing the brief resilience score in our study population, we found 101/268(37.68%) were presented with the low resilience. 161(60.08%) and 6(2.24%) were found to be having normal and high resilience scores. The average avoidant coping score found in our study participants was 21.3±4.6. Majority of the doctors tried self distraction as the method of coping which accounted for about 23.19% of the avoidant coping. The overall average score was 29.58±5.7, among which the majority; about 19.57% of the approach coping, accepted the fact and were coping up with the situation well. The mean resilience was observed to be normal in range among doctors. Better resilience was observed in older age, male gender, lesser duration of patient – doctor contact, years of work experience and in doctors who were staying with family.