Mental Workload and Wellbeing of Healthcare Workers During COVID-19
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented cognitive and emotional demands on healthcare workers worldwide. Escalating patient numbers, heightened infection control procedures and prolonged use of protective equipment intensified mental workload, leading to fatigue, sleep disturbances and elevated stress. Wellbeing in this context encompasses psychological health, job satisfaction and the capacity to sustain performance under pressure. Emerging studies employ tools such as the NASA Task Load Index and validated mental health questionnaires to quantify workload dimensions—mental demand, temporal pressure, effort and frustration—and to assess outcomes including burnout, anxiety and reduced quality of work life. Research has highlighted the complex interplay between individual factors (experience, resilience, coping skills) and organisational determinants (shift patterns, staffing levels, managerial support). Practical interventions range from optimised rostering and peer support programmes to resilience‐building workshops and digital monitoring of workload. This body of work underscores the global imperative to safeguard healthcare worker wellbeing, both to maintain quality of care during crises and to strengthen health systems’ resilience against future public health emergencies.
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Mental Workload and Wellbeing of Healthcare Workers During COVID-19 publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in mental workload and wellbeing of healthcare workers during covid-19 across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Mental workload: The total cognitive and attentional resources required to perform work tasks under given conditions.
Quality of work life: A multidimensional measure of an employee’s satisfaction with job conditions, including safety, compensation and work–life balance.
NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX): A subjective assessment tool that rates perceived workload across six subscales: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort and frustration.
Job burnout: A psychological syndrome marked by emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced sense of personal accomplishment.
Work engagement: A positive, fulfilling state of mind at work characterised by vigour, dedication and absorption in tasks.
References
- The association between workload and quality of work life of nurses taking care of patients with COVID-19. BMC Nursing (2023).
- How Did Work-Related Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Hamper Healthcare Employee Performance during COVID-19? The Mediating Role of Job Burnout and Mental Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2022).
- Factoring and correlation in sleep, fatigue and mental workload of clinical first-line nurses in the post-pandemic era of COVID-19: A multi-center cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Psychiatry (2022).
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