Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Who will be affected?
Readers: No access to all 28 journals. We recommend accessing our articles via PubMed Central
Authors: No access to the submission form or your user account.
Reviewers: No access to your user account. Please download manuscripts you are reviewing for offline reading before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Editors: No access to your user account to assign reviewers or make decisions.
Copyeditors: No access to user account. Please download manuscripts you are copyediting before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Clavier T, Popoff B, Selim J, Beuzelin M, Roussel M, Compère V, Veber B, Besnier E
Association of Social Network Use With Increased Anxiety Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Anesthesiology, Intensive Care, and Emergency Medicine Teams: Cross-Sectional Web-Based Survey Study
Social networking is associated with increased anxiety related to COVID-19 pandemic in anesthesiology, intensive care and emergency medicine teams: a web-based survey
Thomas Clavier;
Benjamin Popoff;
Jean Selim;
Marion Beuzelin;
Mélanie Roussel;
Vincent Compère;
Benoit Veber;
Emmanuel Besnier
ABSTRACT
Background:
Critical care teams are on the front line of coronavirus-disease 2019 (COVID-19) management, which is a stressful situation.
Objective:
Our objective was to assess whether the use of social networks (SN) was associated with increased anxiety related to COVID-19 pandemic in critical care teams.
Methods:
We sent an Internet survey to physicians, residents, registered and auxiliary nurses, and nurse anesthetists providing critical care (anesthesiology, intensive care, emergency medicine) in several French hospitals. The survey evaluated their use of SN, their source of information on COVID-19 and their level of anxiety and information on COVID-19 evaluated on analog scales rated from 0 to 10 (data presented as median[interquartile-range]).
Results:
641 respondents were included in the final analysis; 553 were SN users (86.3%) spending a median time of 60[30-90] minutes/day on them. COVID-19 related anxiety was higher in SN users than in healthcare workers not using them (6[5-8] vs. 5[3-7]) in univariate (P=0.02) and multivariate (P<0.001) analyses with an average anxiety increase of 10% in SN users. Anxiety was higher among healthcare workers using SN to obtain information on COVID-19 than in those using other sources (6[5-8] vs. 6[4-7]; P=0.04). SN users considered they were less informed on COVID-19 than those not using SN (8[7-9] vs. 7[6-8]; P<0.01).
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that SNs contribute to increased anxiety in critical care teams. In order to protect their mental health, advising them to limit or temporarily stop SN use could be a possible way to limit their professional stress related to COVID-19 pandemic.
Citation
Please cite as:
Clavier T, Popoff B, Selim J, Beuzelin M, Roussel M, Compère V, Veber B, Besnier E
Association of Social Network Use With Increased Anxiety Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Anesthesiology, Intensive Care, and Emergency Medicine Teams: Cross-Sectional Web-Based Survey Study