The Impact of the Level of Fear Experienced During the COVID-19 Epidemic on Risk Aversion and Work Interaction Avoidance Behaviors: A Study on Health Professionals.

The main purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the level of fear experienced during the COVID-19 epidemic on risk aversion and work interaction avoidance behaviors. Healthcare workers have always been the group with the highest risk of contracting virus, as they put their lives at risk in all pandemics to fight epidemics on the front lines. Hospital-based cross-sectional research design was used in the study. The universe of the research consisted of all healthcare professionals of two different public hospitals providing secondary care in Ankara. Convenience sampling method was employed. The data were collected by the researchers using the online questionnaire technique. The total number of questionnaire package that were evaluated and used in the analysis of the data is 326. SPSS and AMOS package programs were used in the analysis of the data. Descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, ANOVA test and structural equation modeling were applied to the data. The findings obtained with the structural equation analysis showed that the construct validity of the model was confirmed. It has been determined that the direct causal effect of the COVID-19 fear level of health professionals on risk avoidance behaviors is positive and 0.29 units, while the direct causal effect on the work interaction avoidance behaviors is positive and 0.17 units. In addition, a significant relationship was found between female gender and risk avoidance behavior. The level of fear experienced among healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 epidemic seem to increase their tendency to show risk avoidance and work interaction avoidance behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]