Abstract:
The insurgence of Coronavirus disease popularly referred to as COVID-19 has
tremendously affected healthcare professionals globally. The aim of this study
was to investigate experiences of Health Anxiety, Stress and Coping during the
Covid-19 pandemic among healthcare professionals in selected hospitals in the
Cape Coast Metropolis. This study adopted the Descriptive survey design. The
Multistage sampling technique was used to select 322 health professionals. The
health professionals included Medical Officers, Physician Assistants and
Nurses. Data were gathered using the Health Anxiety Inventory (HAI-SF),
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and the Brief-COPE Inventory. Analyses were
conducted using mean and standard deviation, ANOVA, Pearson Correlation
Coefficient, Multiple Linear Regression Analysis, as well as Independent
Sample t test. The findings showed that healthcare professionals in the Cape
Coast Metropolis experienced low levels of health anxiety and stress during the
current COVID-19 pandemic. There were no significant differences in the
experiences of health anxiety and stress with regards to the categories of health
professionals. However, male healthcare professionals were discovered to have
experienced a significantly higher health anxiety than females. Additionally, it
was found that coping strategies predicted or accounted for variances in
experiences of health anxiety and stress among health professionals. But there
were no significant gender differences in terms of stress. Considering the
findings, it was recommended that medical personnel should be consistently
examined for evaluating indicators of anxiety and stress and also trained to
adopt appropriate coping strategies to mitigate the effect in this pandemic
