Assessment of healthcare workers' protective behaviours against COVID-19 with perceived social support and burnout level: An application within the framework of protection motivation theory

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the physical and mental capacities of healthcare workers (HCWs) in Turkey and around the world, affecting their ability to individually cope with and self-protect against the pandemic. It has therefore become important to identify their cognitive processes in performing protective behaviors against the pandemic. This study aims to assess HCWs' protective behaviors against the pandemic along with perceived social support and burnout through the lens of the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) developed by Rogers (1975). To this end, this study, which was conducted with 360 HCWs working in a training and research hospital in Ankara selected by purposive sampling method, first adapted the "Affecting Factors on Preventive Behaviors of COVID-19" (AFPB-CO) scale, developed by Khazaee-Pool et al. (2020) based on the PMT theory, and conducted its validity and reliability studies. The adaptation study involved first examining the scale's linguistic and content validity, followed by validity and reliability analyses, which showed that the scale's Turkish version (AFPB-CO-TR) was a valid and reliable measurement tool for HCWs in Turkey. The study also included validity and reliability analyses of other scales used, the Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale (MSPSS) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), followed by a presentation of HCWs' sociodemographic and COVID-19 pandemic-related characteristics, the scales' descriptive statistics, and estimated results of the research model. The study found that HCWs in Turkey mostly relied on threat appraisal to derive motivation to self-protect from COVID-19, which was found to increase protection motivation through perceived response efficacy and self-efficacy. However, perceived social support and burnout were found to affect the self-efficacy and protection motivation of certain groups. In conclusion, it was suggested to develop different strategies and training programs based on the characteristics of HCWs such as gender, age, occupation, educational attainment, and service status in COVID-19 wards.