Effect of Covid-19 Pandemic on Career Choices of Children of Healthcare Professionals

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the frontline health workers and their families considerably. Children of HCWs have also been subjected to separation anxiety and those who have lost their parents have suffered from grief, loneliness, social stigma as sources of contagion and post-traumatic stress disorder. All these led us to conduct this survey amongst children of the healthcare professionals in urban India who were between the age group of 10 to18 years to study how this pandemic affected the children’s thought process regarding their career choices. Method: This cross-sectional, observational study was carried out among children of healthcare workers in India. The online self-reported questionnaire included 13 questions related to personal demographic details, effect of Covid -19 pandemic in their family, their career choice before and after the pandemic and the reason for any change in the career choice. Participants with access to internet and of age 10 to 18 years who were able to understand English and willing to participate were included. The data collection was done between June,2021 and August,2021. The presentation of the Categorical variables was done in the form of number and percentage (%). On the other hand, the quantitative data were presented as the means ± SD and as median. The association of the variables which were qualitative in nature were analysed using Fisher’s exact test. The final analysis was done with the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 21.0. p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Observations: There were 53 respondents to the questionnaire that was circulated. Of these 27,19, and 7 were children of doctors, nurses and paramedics. Parents’ profession or age group of the children had no statistically significant effect on the number of children wanting change to their profession after the pandemic (p>0.05) Even though majority of the respondents knew what kind of profession they would like to pursue in life before the advent of the pandemic, 71.70 % (n=38) were not sure about changing their choice of profession even after the ravaging effects of the pandemic were seen.  A similar number of respondents wanted to change their profession from ‘medical to non-medical’[n=7] and ‘non-medical to medical’[n=8]. The decision to change the profession from either medical to non-medical profession or non-medical to medical profession was not significantly different amongst the groups of children who were directly affected or not affected by the SarsCov-2 virus (p> 0.05). A great number of respondents (41.51%) in our study too believed that children of non-medical professionals are at lower risk of Covid-19 infection than themselves. At the same time a major percentage also felt that the pandemic presents an opportunity for reforms in the healthcare system (81.13%). Conclusion: A great percentage of children i.e., 71.70% (n=38) were not sure if they wanted to change their career choice inspite of seeing Covid-19 infections and deaths in their family and friends’ circle. Majority of the children in our study have shown great resilience and an optimistic mindset.