Nivel de estrés, ansiedad y depresión del personal operativo de tres cuerpos de bomberos antes y durante la pandemia por COVID-19

Abstract

Background: In the care and fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, first responders, including fire brigade institutions, may experience different physical and mental health problems, including stress that can generate most of all the personnel operative when performing pre-hospital care when they go out to attend emergencies; the present study aims to confirm and demonstrate the increased stress suffered when they performed pre-hospital care during the state of health emergency in Ecuador, compared to the level of stress caused before de SARS COV2 coronavirus pandemic was declared. Objectives: Evaluate the levels of stress, anxiety and depression of the operational personnel of three Fire Brigades in the province of Guayas before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Compare the levels of stress, anxiety and depression before and during the COVID-19 pandemic declaration. Method: The study that was carried out was descriptive, the metod used was the DASS-21scale together with the sociodemographic variables of the participants such as sex, age, marital status, level of education, type of contract and activity carries out. The DASS-21 sacle is made up of 21 Likert-type items. It present three factors: stress (items: 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14 and 18), anxiety (items: 2, 4, 7, 9, 15, 19 and 20) and depression (items: 3, 5, 10, 13, 16, 17 and 21). This categorization of the different dimensions has been obtained by adding the scores of the responses obtained in the items corresponding to each of the factors. The response options available for this scale were: 0 = it has not happened to me, 1 = it has happened to me a little, 2 = it has happened to me a lot and 3 = it has happened to me a lot. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 32.74 ± 10.67 years between a minimum of 18 and a maximum of 56 years. 32.6% of the participants do not have a permanent job (contract), which generates additional stress. The level of stress, anxiety and depression considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic declaration. Conclusion: The results may be similar for other Fire Brigades in the same province, thus being able to establish corrective measures especially to operational personnel who handle emergencies on a daily basis without adequate protection.