Little is known about what the long-term mental health impact of the covid-19 pandemic will be on health care workers. However, synthesising knowledge from past pandemics can help to anticipate this, along with identifying interventions required, target populations most in need, and at what time points. Accordingly, the aim of collecting this data set (published studies) is to provide a balanced evaluation of what is currently known about mental health impacts of pandemics on HCWs in the short- and long-term, methodological limitations and impact on knowledge claims. The intention is to conduct a rapid evidence assessment using a literary synthesis approach. An extensive search was conducted for studies published in peer-reviewed journals between January 2000 and May 2020. As the mental health outcome of pandemics on health care workers is a multidisciplinary topic, the following databases were used: Cochrane Library, Discover, PsychInfo, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The search strategy sequence was: 1) mental health outcomes OR mental OR psychological OR health OR emotional OR social OR costs OR consequences; 2) health care workers OR healthcare workers OR medical workers OR doctors OR physicians OR nurses OR paramedics; 3) pandemic* OR epidemic OR protracted incident.

The majority of the 41 studies included in the rapid evidence assessment focussed on the 2003 SARS outbreak (k=34), followed by the 2009 H1N1 outbreak (k=4). Three recent publications relating to covid-19 were also included33, 40, 79. The vast majority of studies were conducted in Canada (k=11) and Asian countries (k=27: Hong Kong, k=8; Taiwan, k=8; Singapore, k=5; China, k=5; Japan, k=1). Two studies were conducted in Australia and one in Greece. In total, 31,111 HCWs participated across these 41 studies. Sampling frames ranged from all staff in one hospital to staff from across 34 hospitals. Data extraction followed a two-stage selection process consisting of an initial screening of titles and abstracts against the predetermined inclusion / exclusion criteria, followed by full-text versions being downloaded and read. Inter-rater reliability was conducted with another reviewer independently reading 50% of articles to assess whether they met the inclusion criteria. In total, this resulted in 41 studies being identified as relevant to include in the rapid evidence assessment.