Death anxiety and burnout in intensive care unit specialists facing the COVID-19 outbreak: The mediating role of obsession with COVID-19 and coronaphobia

Abstract

The aim of the study was to examine the role of the obsession with COVID-19 thoughts and coronaphobia in the relationship of death anxiety with burnout among staff working at infectious diseases hospitals in the front-line of the fight against COVID-19. A cross-sectional online survey (N = 110) was conducted during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results showed that obsession with COVID-19 and coronaphobia mediated the relationship of death anxiety with burnout. Most of the participants reported higher levels of death anxiety compared with the general population and nurses reported higher levels of death anxiety than physicians.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Acknowledgments

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Disclosure statement

The other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.