Healthcare workers are, for the most part, psychologically resilient professionals, trained and experienced in dealing with illness and death. Media representations have described frontline healthcare workers “on their knees” in response to the crisis, leading to forewarning of an ensuing mental health epidemic amongst the healthcare workforce. Many have been redeployed into new roles, teams or newly purposed wards so have been working in unfamiliar settings and without established social support from colleagues.Īs COVID-19 has progressed around the world, we have heard repeatedly about the mental health burden faced by frontline healthcare workers globally as they have worked to treat patients affected by the virus. They have dealt with challenges in delivering care with strict infection control measures in place and not always with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). They have had to manage higher numbers of patients with high mortality rates in a high-pressure environment.
They have faced genuine threats to their own physical safety and indirectly to that of their families. We have an opportunity to learn from the lessons of previous crises, mitigate the negative mental health impact of COVID-19 and support the longer-term wellbeing of the healthcare workforce worldwide.ĬOVID-19 has placed extreme demands on healthcare workers. The experiences of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic are not unprecedented the themes that arose from previous pandemics and epidemics were remarkably resonant with what we are hearing about the impact of COVID-19 globally today. Healthcare workers’ relationships with families, colleagues, organisations, media and the wider public were complicated and could be experienced concomitantly as sources of support but also sources of stress. Workers struggled with high workloads and long shifts and desired adequate rest and recovery. This was greatest in the early phases of pandemics and exacerbated by inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), insufficient resources, and inconsistent information. Participants across all the studies were deeply concerned about their own and/or others’ physical safety. Meta-synthesis derived eight key themes which largely transcended temporal and geographical boundaries.
This review identified 46 qualitative studies which explored healthcare workers’ experiences and views from pandemics or epidemics including and prior to COVID-19. We conducted a meta-synthesis of all qualitative results to synthesise findings and develop an overarching set of themes and sub-themes which captured the experiences and views of frontline healthcare workers across the studies. We also reviewed relevant grey literature, screened pre-print servers and hand searched reference lists of key texts for all published accounts of healthcare workers’ experiences of working on the frontline and views about support during COVID-19 and previous pandemics/epidemics. We searched key healthcare databases (Medline, PsychINFO and PubMed) from inception to September 28, 2020. However, little attention has so far been paid to understanding the impact of working on a pandemic from healthcare workers’ own perspectives or what their views are about support.
There has been increasing recognition of the potential mental health impact of COVID-19 on frontline workers and calls to provide psychosocial support for them. Healthcare workers across the world have risen to the demands of treating COVID-19 patients, potentially at significant cost to their own health and wellbeing.
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