Mediator roles of resilience and intolerance of uncertainty in the effect of healthcare professionals’ coronavirus stigma on stress

This study aims to examine the mediating roles of resilience and intolerance of uncertainty in the effect of healthcare professionals’ coronavirus stigma on perceived stress levels. A questionnaire survey was administered to 327 health workers at a training and research hospital in Ankara, Turkey. In this context, a regression analysis based on the bootstrapping method was performed by running the process macro model. This study determined that the level of coronavirus stigma had an indirect effect on perceived stress mediated by resilience (β =.0317). According to this finding, the level of coronavirus stigma reduces psychological resilience, and resilience reduces perceived stress. Additionally, intolerance of uncertainty partially mediates the effect of the coronavirus stigma level on perceived stress. Our results show that both resilience and intolerance of uncertainty levels are mediators of the effect of healthcare professionals’ coronavirus stigma levels on perceived stress levels. Necessary precautions should be taken to prevent stigmatization of health workers, which causes many negative consequences, as our study reveals. Otherwise, stigmatization may reduce the general functionality of healthcare professionals as an effective risk factor.