A recent scoping review published in BMC Health Services Research highlights the prevalence of health anxiety among healthcare professionals. Conducted by Georgina M. Schlub from the University of Technology Sydney, along with colleagues, the review suggests that this anxiety may be more common and impactful than previously recognized.
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The research team adhered to PRISMA-ScR reporting guidelines to identify 35 peer-reviewed articles that examined health anxiety in healthcare workers. Notably, 29 of these studies were conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, which the authors suggest served as a natural experiment exposing healthcare professionals to significant personal risk and witnessing substantial patient mortality.
The review included an exploratory quantitative analysis of 19 studies that provided health anxiety data amenable to pooling. However, the authors caution against interpreting the combined prevalence figure due to extreme heterogeneity among the studies, with a between-study variability statistic, I-squared, reported at 99.8 percent. This indicates significant differences in study populations and methodologies, rendering any single number more indicative than definitive.
Despite the variability, certain trends in contributing factors emerged, such as age, profession, gender, and broader sociodemographic characteristics. Younger healthcare workers tended to report higher anxiety levels, a trend consistent with general population studies. Additionally, frontline roles showed increased exposure to health-related stressors, while analyses indicated women generally reported higher anxiety levels than men.
The authors employed the Cognitive Model of health anxiety as a framework for their findings, suggesting that health anxiety among healthcare professionals may stem from vicarious trauma—the psychological impact of repeated exposure to patients’ suffering. The model posits that healthcare workers may misinterpret benign bodily sensations as serious illness, compounded by their established medical knowledge. Thus, a headache may evoke fears of severe conditions rather than being perceived as a minor ailment.
Unchecked health anxiety can severely impact healthcare professionals, contributing to diminished mental and physical well-being, increased healthcare utilization, reduced concentration, and higher absenteeism. The authors argue that health anxiety should be recognized as an occupational safety issue, akin to other workplace hazards like needlestick injuries and infectious exposures.
The review also notes that effective treatments, particularly cognitive behavioural therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, exist but may not be adequately adapted for healthcare workers. The authors call for further research to understand the specific mechanisms contributing to health anxiety in this workforce and to refine treatment strategies.
The review identifies a lack of longitudinal data, emphasizing the need for future studies to clarify whether health anxiety precedes occupational stress or is a response to it. It also highlights that the extreme variability in study methods complicates comparisons and suggests a more systematic approach to screening and addressing the health anxiety of healthcare professionals, especially in the context of the psychological toll highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic.