Long COVID symptoms appear to be common among healthcare workers

New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London and University College London has found that 33.6% of healthcare workers surveyed in England report symptoms consistent with post-COVID syndrome (PCS ), better known as long as COVID. Yet only 7.4% of respondents reported receiving a formal diagnosis.

“Post-COVID-19 syndrome among 5248 healthcare workers in England: longitudinal findings from NHS CHECK“was published in Occupational and environmental medicine.

The research is part of the wider long-term NHS CHECK study which is monitoring the mental and physical health of NHS staff during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Other research by NHS CHECK includes healthcare workers’ experiences of support services, the prevalence of mental health problems, moral injury and suicidal ideation.

The study used the NICE definition of long COVID-19, which includes symptoms such as fatigue, cognitive problems and anxiety for 12 weeks or more after having COVID.

Four and a half years after it was first described, there is still a lot to learn about long COVID. This study sought to investigate how common COVID is among healthcare workers and whether certain people are more likely to develop it than others.

“PCS can have a dramatic impact on a person’s daily life. If we want to ensure that healthcare workers and the wider population affected receive the best possible care and support, we need to understand both the physiological and psychosocial mechanisms behind them,” says Dr Sharon Stevelink, Reader in Epidemiology and one of the authors of the King’s IoPPN study.

The research was led by Dr. Danielle Lamb, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care at University College London, who said: “COVID-19 has not gone away. We know that more infections mean more people are at risk of developing long-term illness. COVID.

“This research shows that we should be particularly concerned about the impact this has on the health and social care sector, particularly among older and female workers, and staff with pre-existing physical and mental health conditions.

“We now need to better understand the complex interplay between biomedical, psychological and social factors that influence people’s experiences with long COVID, and how best to support healthcare workers with this condition.”

The research team worked with a Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) panel of 16 healthcare workers with long-term COVID-19. The panel helped design the study by developing the research questions, designing the analysis, and interpreting the results.

The co-leader of the study, Dr. Brendan Dempsey, research fellow at University College London, said: “Working with the healthcare professionals who made up our PPIE group has been really important to ensure we do research that is relevant to them. They also helped interpret our results, sharing their own experiences of living with long COVID and working in the NHS.”

To compile the study’s findings, data was collected from more than 5,000 healthcare workers in three surveys spanning 32 months. The study found that potential risk factors for long-term COVID-19 include being female, between the ages of 51 and 60, working directly with COVID-19 patients, having pre-existing respiratory conditions and having existing mental health conditions.

The lack of a formal diagnosis, despite the widespread prevalence of symptoms, raises concerns that healthcare professionals with long-term COVID symptoms are not seeking care or going undiagnosed. The research team calls for urgent improvements in diagnostic practices and access to support for people with long COVID in healthcare.