Assessment of Occupational Stress Among Workers of Covid-19 Testing Sites: The Case of Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research

Abstract

Background: Occupational stress has witnessed increased prevalence in the health care fraternity in recent times. COVID-19 has placed a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of health professionals as the whole world battles against the pandemic. Testing sites have been inundated with samples to determine their status and the next line of action in terms of treatment, management and policy. As soldiers in the fight against the pandemic, Laboratory Scientist must be in the position to meet the demand placed on them by the circumstances at hand to offer quality results thereby saving lives. Objective: This study therefore aims to estimate the prevalence of occupational stress among workers of NMIMR during COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: The study was an institutional-based cross-sectional study involving a total of 153 staffs of NMIMR (one of the major COVID-19 testing centre in Ghana) as study participants. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data on the level of stress using the Marlin stress scale, in addition to data on the occupational stressors and coping mechanisms that the staff adopt to deal with the stress. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data while inferential statistics was employed for further analysis. STATA version 16 was used for all statistical analysis with a P-value <0.05 used to declare statistical significance. Findings: The prevalence of stress among the workers at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research was generally high (89.5%) with almost half of respondents experiencing moderate to severe stress. Chief among the job stressors affecting the workers included strict working hours and excessive workload. Working for 41-50 hours weekly, was 3.94 times more likely to predict stress as compared to working up to 40 hours a week. The coping mechanism which was statistically associated with stress per the Chi square test in this study was consulting counsellors or religious leaders as means of coping with stress (p-value= 0.012). Conclusion: Findings indicated that the research respondents have the proportion of stress being 85.5% with 10.5% of respondents experiencing severe forms of occupational stress. It was found that there existed a statistically significant difference between work context domain and the levels of occupational stress (p-value= 0.0388).