Association between COVID-19 Anxiety and Cognitive Failure and Temperament Components in the Personnel of an Iranian Hospital, Iran, 2021

The outbreak of COVID-19 has a serious crisis for health systems in different countries. This study aimed to investigate the association between COVID-19 anxiety and cognitive failure and temperament components in the personnel of a hospital in the Yazd Province.

This was a cross-sectional study. The participants were the personnel of a hospital. The convenience sampling method was used for the sampling purpose. The participants were the personnel of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 sections of a hospital. Data collection tools included a demographic questionnaire, the Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (CDAS), the Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ), and the Emotionality Activity Sociability (EAS) Questionnaire. Data analysis was performed in SPSS-24 software. 

The mean age of the participants was 33.45 (6.42) years. COVID-19 anxiety was significantly higher in the non-COVID-19 personnel than in the COVID-19 personnel (P < 0.001). In addition, a positive correlation was found between COVID-19 anxiety scores and cognitive failure scores (P = 0.04). After investigating the simultaneous relation of COVID-19 anxiety with cognitive failure and temperament components, the model results showed that cognitive failure (P = 0.02) and sociability (P < 0.001) had a significant effect on COVID-19 anxiety.

High levels of COVID-19 anxiety in non-COVID-19 section personnel indicated the importance of paying more attention to all hospital occupations. To reduce cognitive failure and anxiety, it is recommended to provide psychological training, workloads reduction, and the number of personnel be increased.