SUBMISSIONS

SUBMISSION DETAIL

Gülden TURHAN, Ahmet ÖZBEK
 


Keywords:



MEDICAL PERSONNEL VERSUS THE OTHERS: COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT FOR ADVERSE EFFECTS OF FACEMASKS USE DURING COVID-19 IN TURKEY
 
The study is focusing on the judgements regarding adverse effects of facemask use during COVID-19 outbreak. Not only medical personnel but also general public are bound to wear the mask protecting from highly transmissible diseases. The question to look for answer is how medical personnel's complaints related to use facemask differ compared to others. Online survey was applied to 675 respondents residing in Istanbul, Turkey. The complaints experienced in 377 medical personnel were inability to wash the face comfortably, headache, difficulty breathing, sweating, excessive hot flashes, not being recognized by the surrounding people and damaging to the face. The complaints reported by 298 general public were difficulty breathing, sweating, excessive hot flashes and damaging to the face. The side effects such as allergic effect, difficulty to wear on and take off the mask, feeling ugly when the mask is on face and perceiving high-priced were not felt much by the whole participants in the survey. They all were ambivalent on some effects that were thirsty feeling, the feeling of repression associated with the forced wearing of the mask and inability to see one's around on the road easily. Complaints differing significantly in the general public and medical staff include: inability to wash face comfortably, headache, thirsty feeling, allergic effect, high priced perception, damaging face and inability to see one's around easily when one was on the road. For all negative effects caused by mask use, medical personnel had more strongly complaints in comparison with the others.

Anahtar Kelimeler: adverse effects, COVID-19, facemask, general public, medical personnel