Investigation of Neuropsychological Dysfunction Among Recovered Nurses: The COVID-19

This investigation aimed to compare the neuropsychological dysfunctions of coronavirus (COVID-19)-recovered nurses to those of healthy nurses.

The present research method was descriptive and causal-comparative, in which the statistical population consisted of nurses with a history of COVID disease and working in the COVID department of public hospitals in Isfahan city. The available method selected 30 nurses with a history of illness and compared them with 30 other nurses from the same hospitals. We collected data using the "go/no go" test, the Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), and direct and inverted word reading tests. We also analyzed the collected data using multivariate analysis of variance.

The results showed a significant difference between nurses with a history of COVID disease and normal nurses in memory performance, the total error of the Wisconsin card sorting test, and the error of committing and inappropriately inhibiting the go/no go task (P < 0.01). However, there is no significant difference between the two groups in the number of classes, the error of perseveration in the Wisconsin test, or the reaction time of the go/no task (P < 0.05).

Therefore, the present study's results indicate that nurses recovering from COVID-19 perform worse than normal nurses in memory functions, cognitive flexibility, and response inhibition within one to three months of recovery.