STEPPS: Study to Examine Physicians’ Pandemic Stress

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, American healthcare has experienced cascading failures. COVID-19 has exposed a hollowed out public health infrastructure, a broken healthcare system, and deeply entrenched health disparities. It has also intensified ongoing stress, overwork, and disillusionment among the healthcare workforce. Consequently, healthcare professionals responding to the pandemic are experiencing crises of moral integrity and personal and professional wellbeing.

STEPPS integrates qualitative interviews with conceptual analysis to investigate occupational stress experienced by physicians working on the front lines of COVID-19 care in four American cities.