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Heart Rate Variability of Healthcare Workers during Covid-19

The outbreak of Covid-19 has exacerbated the mental health of Healthcare Workers (HCWs), caused by an increase in their stress levels owing to an exponential rise in their workloads. Previous works have revealed visible changes in Heart Rate Variability (HRV), in response to increased/decreased stress levels. This study focused on analyzing HRV as a parameter to observe the impact of higher stress levels, on clinicians, due to the pandemic. Their responses to a Perceived Stress Score (PSS) questionnaire were used as a reference to determine their escalated stress levels. The responses showed that 40% of clinicians revealed increased levels of high chronic stress while the remaining were affected by moderate chronic stress. We computed HRV for each clinician from HR data obtained using a chest-based wearable device during sleep and ward sessions. Through detailed analysis of HRV, we observed clinicians with high chronic stress showed lower HRV when compared to clinicians with moderate chronic stress during both sleep and ward sessions. Later we did a close investigation of their HRV on Day 1 and Day 2 in Covid-IP (Inpatient) and compared the HRV features. Finally, we compared the HRV features of clinicians between Covid-IP Covid-OP (Outpatient) ward sessions. The above study validated that HRV is a reliable parameter for an objective assessment of stress levels.