Abstract
Introduction: Mass media tools have an important role in public health problems affecting the society on a global scale, such as the COVID-19 outbreak. In the newspaper, which is one of the mass media tools, news about healthcare workers, the occupational group most exposed to the epidemic, has been covered.
Aim: The study was done to assess newspaper news on health workers during COVID-19 outbreak.
Method: The population of the study was composed of the three newspapers that had the highest circulation number, an e-archive and to whose archives we were able to access between the 11th of March and the 15th of April, 2020. This qualitative study included 118 news articles on health workers published in these three newspapers during COVID-19 outbreak. These articles were assessed through content analysis, classified into five main themes, and examined in terms through thematic analysis.
Results: During COVID-19 pandemic, it was seen that (11.64%) of the news of these three newspapers (n=118) were related to health workers. Most of these news articles were published as actual news and these articles were classified into the roles and responsibilities of health workers (30.50%), problems of health workers during the pandemic (28.81%), social image of health workers (18.64%), interventions to protect health workers (14.40%) and personal benefits of health workers (7.61%).
Conclusion: It was identified that newspaper news raised awareness as to health workers’ roles and responsibilities, problems and made contribution to their social images during the outbreak