Fear of COVID-19, nurse's stress, and health care behaviors toward elderly people

Abstract EN

Elderly people are the most vulnerable group for high morbidity and mortality from Covid-19.

As nurses are at the front of fighting this pandemic in all geriatric settings, they have faced several stressors and fear of corona which can affect the provided elderly care.

This study aimed to determine nurses' fear of Covid-19 and stress and their effects on health care behaviors towards elderly people.

Research design : A cross-sectional descriptive research design was carried out on 185 nurses who are working in geriatric health care settings of ten governorates of Egypt and completed an online questionnaire which distributed from September 2020 to February 2021.

Tools : Demographic characteristics and three scales were used: (1) The Fear of COVID-19 (FCV-19S), (2) The Nursing Stress Scale (NSS), and (3) The Caring Behaviors Inventory scale (CBI).

Results indicated that 41.0 of the studied nurses had a mild level of fear from COVID-19 and 20% of them experienced severe stress.

Besides, there was a significantly positive correlation between nurses' Fear of COVID-19 and their stress (r=.77, p <.001), while, significant negative correlations between (fear of COVID-19 & nursing stress) and caring behaviors with (r= -61, p <.001) & (r= -.55, p <.001) respectively were found.

Conclusion : This study demonstrated that 41% and 35% of the studied nurses had mild levels of fear from Covid-19 and stress respectively, added to nurses' fear of Covid-19 and stress affected health care behaviors toward elderly people negatively.

Recommendations : Psychological intervention for geriatric nurses is needed to ensure adequate adaptation and high quality of elderly care despite this global crisis.