Background: Health care workers employed in the COVID‐19 emergency are at a high risk of stress.Aims and objectives: To explore the mediating roles of self‐efficacy and resilience between stress and both physical and mental quality‐of‐life components in intensive care nurses during the COVID‐19 pandemic.Design: Cross‐sectional survey design.Methods: The stress subscale (depression, anxiety, and stress scale in Spanish Scale, DASS‐21), the summary components (physical and mental) of health‐related quality of life (SF‐36), the general self‐efficacy scale (GSES), and the resilience scale (RS‐14) were administered in 308 intensive care nurses. Serial multiple mediator models were used.Results: There was a significant indirect effect of levels of perceived stress on both physical and mental health components through self‐efficacy and resilience. Specifically, greater perception of self‐efficacy was associated with a lower perception of stress and greater resilience, while higher resilience was associated with greater physical and mental health (B = −0.03; SE = 0.02; 95% confidence interval [CI] = [−0.07, −0.01]; B = −0.03, SE = 0.01, 95% CI = [−0.07, −0.01], respectively). It was observed that self‐efficacy alone also mediates the relationship of the perception of stress on the components of physical and mental health (B = −0.07; SE = 0.05; 95% CI = [−0.18, −0.03]; B = −0.09; SE = 0.04; 95% CI = [−0.17, −0.24], respectively). However, resilience alone was not a significant mediator of these associations.Conclusions: It can be concluded that stress is linked to the physical and mental health components related to quality of life through self‐efficacy and resilience.Relevance to clinical practice: These psychological resources would allow the nursing staff to maintain a good quality of life despite high levels of stress. These findings have implications for future research in terms of both model testing and clinical application.

Objective. To identify pregnancy worries in women by assessing the intensity of these worries and how they change over the course of pregnancy, as well as their relations with sociodemographic and clinical variables. Design. Longitudinal study using a postal questionnaire. Setting. University hospital in Madrid. Population. 285 pregnant women. Method. Women were asked about their pregnancy‐specific worries in their first trimester (mean gestational age 14.4 weeks) and third trimester (mean gestational age 34.3 weeks). Main Outcome Measures. The women completed a questionnaire that included sociodemographic information and the Cambridge Worry Scale. Results. Pregnancy worries were significantly reduced during the third trimester. The main concern throughout gestation was worry about fetal health. Multiparity and pregnancy planning protected women from pregnancy worries, whereas having had a miscarriage had a negative effect. A younger age and being employed contributed to greater socioeconomic worries. Conclusions. Worries related to the health of the fetus are universal across different nationalities. A first pregnancy, unplanned pregnancy, and previous miscarriage are risk factors that influence the intensity of a woman's worries. To improve the health and quality of life of pregnant women, a holistic approach to their care should include evaluation of their worries and appropriate intervention in particular groups considered at risk.

Background: The situation of the COVID‐19 global pandemic has generated an unprecedented state of emergency worldwide that has had a psychological impact on health care workers working in the ICU and this has created the need to implement different psychological strategies.Aim: This study explores (a) the prevalence of symptoms associated with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), (b) the relationship between GAD symptoms and resilience skills, and (c) which of the resilience skills were associated with a probable GAD among the ICU professionals during the COVID‐19 pandemic.Study design: Cross‐sectional survey design.Methods: We explored anxiety and resilience in 448 ICU health care workers using an online survey.Results: The participants showed high resilience levels and more than half of them presented symptoms consistent with a possible diagnosis of GAD. The GAD symptoms were more prevalent among women, nursing assistants, interns, staff who worked on rotation and health care workers who had to attend to more than 20 COVID patients. Significant negative correlations between resilience skills and GAD symptoms were found. The multiple regression analysis showed that resilience skills contribute to 14.4% of the variance for GAD symptoms. The binary logistic regression showed that the only skill that had a significant and negative predictive effect was “I usually take things in my stride” (OR = 0.774, 95% CI 0.67, 0.88; P = .000). This ability was the differentiating skill between professionals who equal or exceed the cut‐off point established for the diagnosis of a probable GAD regarding those who do not.Conclusion: ICU professionals developed symptoms consistent with a possible diagnosis of GAD due to their exposure to extremely stressful circumstances. However, resilience skills acted as a protective factor.Relevance to clinical practice: The importance of incorporating programmes that mitigate these psychological effects and to promote adaptive coping styles during pandemics has become a need after what ICU professionals have gone through.

The authors examined the effects of personality and pregnancy worries on pregnant women’s mental and physical health with 154 women in the first half of their gestational period. Self-report questionnaires were used to collect information about control variables, sociodemographic (age, educational level, and work), and pregnancy variables (previous miscarriages, weeks of gestation, and planned pregnancy). Personality was measured using the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, pregnancy worries by the Cambridge Worry Scale, psychiatric clinical symptomatology using the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R), and physical symptomatology with the Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy Instrument. Significant relations were observed between pregnancy worries, the traits of agreeableness and neuroticism, and all the SCL-90-R dimensions. The analyses revealed a direct effect of neuroticism and agreeableness on pregnancy worries. Pregnancy worries mediated the effects of both neuroticism and agreeableness on interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, and paranoid ideation. Worries were found not to have mediating effects between personality and somatic symptomatology. These results suggest that neuroticism exerts a negative effect on the psychological health of pregnant women, whereas agreeableness has a positive effect (both as a direct effect and as an indirect effect mediated by pregnancy worries). These findings have important practical implications regarding the planning of health care programs for pregnant women: Specifically, health professionals must take personality into account as a potential determinant of pregnant women’s health, not only for the prevention of risks (in the case of neuroticism) but also for promoting health (in the case of agreeableness).