“We hope that our findings will inspire health-care leaders and physicians to work together to understand and address these mental health impacts,” -Dr. Manish SoodA systematic review and meta-analysis led by Dr. Manish Sood found that 18 per cent of physicians experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This figure was more than three times higher than among the general population. 

The team assessed 57 studies involving 28,965 physicians from 25 countries. Their results, published in JAMA Network Open, also showed female physicians were almost twice as likely as male physicians to develop PTSD, and medical trainees were more likely to develop PTSD than attending physicians. When analyzed by specialty, PTSD was most common in family medicine (31 per cent), followed by emergency medicine (23 per cent). 

Even before the pandemic, previous studies showed that PTSD was more prevalent among physicians than the general population. “We hope that our findings will inspire health-care leaders and physicians to work together to understand and address these mental health impacts,” said Dr. Sood, nephrologist and senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital, professor at the University of Ottawa.

See coverage in the Ottawa Citizen, MedPage Today and La Presse Canadienne.

Authors: Mihir Kamra, Shan Dhaliwal, Wenshan Li, Shrey Acharya, Adrian Wong, Andy Zhu, Jaydev Vemulakonda, Janet Wilson, Maya Gibb, Courtney Maskerine, Edward Spilg, Peter Tanuseputro, Daniel T. Myran, Marco Solmi, Manish M. Sood.

Funding: Canadian Medical Association

The Ottawa Hospital is a leading academic health, research and learning hospital proudly affiliated with the University of Ottawa and supported by The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.