Relationship Among Personality, Self-efficacy, And Negative Emotions Of Medical Staff During The Epidemic Of Avian Influenza

In 2013, the highly pathogenic avain influenza H7N9 was first reported to infect human beings in China, which caused considerable social panic. During the epidemic, medical staffs were facing high risk and multiple pressures as they work at the frontline and have direct physical contacts with H7N9 patients, thus it is easy for them to develop epidemic-related negative emotions such as drepression, neurasthenia, fear, obsession-anxity and hypochondriasis. These negative emotions will not only affect the mental and physical health of medical works, but also influence their treatment towards patients as well as the emotional of the public. This research conducted a cross sectional study among 281 medical staffs that have unprected close exposure to H7N9 patients in Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Lishui district. The questinares includes self designed basic information questinare, General Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale(GSES), Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-SR) and Public Health Emergency Questionare. Non-parametric test, Pearson correlation analysis, multiple stepwise regression analysis were used to analyze the relationships among medical staffs’ personality, negative emotions and self-efficacy during the avain influenza epidemic. Structural equation model was build to evaluate the intermediation of self-efficacy between personality and negative emotions.The result shows that the average score of depression, neurasthenia, fear, obsession-anxity and hypochondriasis for objects being investigated are siginificantly higher than general populations and fear is the most common negative emotion. Obvious differences have been observed among groups with different gender, career, physical and mental health status.Depression, neurasthenia, obsession-anxity were positively correlated with Psychoticism while negatively correlated with Extraversion. Neuroticism is positively related to depression, neurasthenia, fear, obsession-anxity and hypochondriasis. Self-efficacy has a stronge negative relationship with depression, neurasthenia, fear, obsession-anxity, Neuroticism and positive relationship with Psychoticism. Self-efficacy plays an incomplete intermediation role between Extraversion, Neuroticism and negative emotions. The intermediation was stronger for Extraversion than for Neuroticism.The result suggested that female, nurse with poor physical and mental health are the high risk group of epidemic-related negative emotions. Outgoing person with stable personality, high level of self-efficacy and low level of psychoticism tender to withstand negative emotions. Personality can affect one’s emotions through influence his/her self-efficacy. During Emergency pandemic, the authorities should pay a close attention to the mental status of medical staffs working in the frontline, improving their self- efficacy level and launching psychological interventions targeting high risk groups.