PHYSICIANS’ SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A BINARY LOGISTIC MODEL

T. S. Rotaru, D. B. Iliescu, L. Oprea

Abstract: Introduction. During a pandemic, doctors are or are not willing to work due to numerous factors. Studies have shown that doctors tend to prioritize their own safety and the safety of their families.
Objective. We have built a profile for doctors who prioritize their own safety and the safety of their families during a pandemic.
Method. A total of 1285 Romanian doctors completed an online survey belonging to a larger study. We used a logistical binary regression to build a profile for doctors who consider their own safety and the safety of their families as having priority. All the participants responded, among other things, to an item about responsibility. We performed Backward-Wald computations to determine the best predictors.
Results. We reached seven predictors that could differentiate between respondents who tended to agree with the responsibility statement and those who tended to disagree. The Cox and Snell pseudo R2 coefficient were .11. The predictors referred to: leaving the job to protect family, transportation, new job responsibilities, necessity of wage, needing to contribute, abandoning patients and working in a different hospital.
Conclusion. The results show that doctors are not necessarily aligned with the theoretical “duty to care”. Those who prioritize safety for themselves and for their families seem to feel strongly about a hierarchy of values they have. For these doctors, institutional responsibility might take precedence with respect to patients, so they do not feel a sense of abandoning their patients if they don’t show up to work.
Keywords: responsibility, duty to care, willingness to work.