Fear of COVID 19 and the relation to resilience, meaning in life and subjective well being - Comparison between American and Israeli health care workers

While COVID-19 has had a detrimental impact on most of the world's population, it has especially affected health care workers (HCWs) who are on the front lines fighting the virus. How HCWs cope with the pandemic have recently been explored. Differences across cultural and health care system settings related to fear of COVID 19 and measures of wellbeing may provide further insight to the coping mechanisms and experiences of HCWs during this worldwide pandemic. The overall subjective well-being and meaning in life scores are noticeably higher for the American participants whereas the fear of COVID and resilience scores are close in both studies, with slightly higher resilience and lower fear in the Israeli HCWs. Age, ethnicity and lower resilience were found to be significantly associated with higher fear of COVID-19 in both cohorts. In the Israeli participants, education level and life satisfaction were also associated with lower fear of COVID19 whereas in the American cohort, gender and relationship were also associated. These results suggest that albeit the cultural differences, similar mechanisms namely age and resilience, are important in coping with fear of the COVID-19 pandemic among both cohorts of HCWs. Therefore, it is important to enhance resilience in order to reduce the psychological burden of the pandemic among HCWs. This study was conducted prior to the availability of a vaccine.