Introduction
Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS COV-2) first emerged in Wuhan towards the
end of 2019. The pandemic is now influencing the whole world with a
large number of deaths, besides many other medical, mental health and
social consequences. While the average population will show normal
responses to pandemic stressors, others who are more mentally vulnerable
to anxiety have had more emotional responses.Catastrophic thinking can
trigger emotional reactions in the healthy population such as 1) panic
disorder with anxiety, 2) specific phobias, 3) obsessive compulsive
disorder, 4) post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); 5) pain (1-3).
Sleep plays a unique role in the maintenance of immunity; the
circumstances that affect its quality have been associated with a
reduction in the response to vaccines and an increase in vulnerability
to infectious diseases. Sleep can be affected in the COVID-19 pandemic,
which naturally causes an increase in anxiety and stress, contributing
to the deregulation of inflammatory and antiviral responses (4). There
are various studies showing that sleep quality is significantly affected
in healthcare workers. The reason for this is that healthcare workers
are prone to increased working hours and labor intensity in the face of
serious epidemics, not being able to find enough time to rest, chronic
stress and psychological distress (5,6). The aim of this study is to
evaluate the sleep behaviors of healthcare workers working in secondary
and tertiary hospitals in a large population in Turkey, and we wanted to
show how sleep quality was affected during the pandemic process by using
the easily applicable Jenkins sleep scale (JSS).