Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 6, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 6, 2020 - Dec 1, 2020
Date Accepted: Jan 21, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Feb 22, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Antecedents of individuals concerns regarding hygiene in hospitals and the decision to postpone surgeries during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a cross-sectional online-survey in Germany
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic poses a major challenge to our everyday lives. Especially in the context of hospitalization, it can be expected to have a strong influence on affective reactions and preventive behavior. Research is needed to develop evidence-driven strategies to cope with this challenging situation. To this end, the present survey investigates the effect of personality traits, risk taking behavior, and anxiety on affective reactions and anticipated behavior in the medical context during the COVID-19 pandemic
Objective:
The aim of this study was to identify key factors associated with individuals concerns regarding hygiene in hospitals and the decision to postpone surgeries
Methods:
Cross-sectional online survey of N = 929 residents of Germany (n = 792 women; 85.3%) with a mean age of 35.2 years (SD = 12.9). Hypotheses were tested with a saturated path analysis.
Results:
A direct effect of anxiety on concerns about safety and hygiene in hospitals and anticipated behavior regarding one`s own non-urgent surgery was found. Risk taking was only associated with anticipated behavior. In addition, most personality traits were related neither with concerns about safety and hygiene in hospitals nor with anticipated behavior.
Conclusions:
The findings suggest that no distinct interventions or information campaigns is necessary for individuals with different personality traits, or different levels of risk taking behavior. However, we recommend that health care workers when interacting with patients should carefully address anxiety.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.