Traumatic Impact on the Mental Health of Healthcare Workers from COVID-19 Crisis
The recently reported suicides of two healthcare workers in New York City—an emergency medical technician and an emergency physician—may be a harbinger of the traumatic effect that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on healthcare workers.
Although healthcare workers are trained to handle numerous medical crises, just as soldiers on the battlefield suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), those recent suicides may indicate a need for healthcare providers to address the stress and coping challenges being heaped upon healthcare workers.
Here is what Wendy Dean, a psychiatrist, president, and cofounder with Simon G. Talbot of the nonprofit organization Moral Injury of Healthcare, wrote to describe the experience of healthcare workers on the frontlines in the fight against COVID-19 — “Those on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those in the hardest-hit areas, have seen conditions they never imagined possible in the country with the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Watching patients die alone is traumatic. Having to choose your own safety over offering comfort to the dying because your hospital or healthcare system does not have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to go around inflicts moral injury. When facing the reality of constrained resources and unthinkable choices, working to exhaustion, and caring for patients at great personal risk, the only way to get through each shift is to do what is immediately at hand.”
Here are five of Wendy Dean’s suggested basic principles that healthcare providers might want to use to address the aftermath mental effects that the Coronavirus crisis may have on staff members:
- Ease Up. Recognize that care givers may need a lighter schedule to give them time to process their experiences and resolve them.
- Check-In. Determine how caregivers are coping.
- Provide Support. Find ways to pull staff members together to support each other. Officially recognize the value and contribution staff members have provided the organization during this crisis.
- Listen. Tolerating staff members’ criticism regarding the organization’s response to the pandemic without defensiveness or retaliation can build trust throughout the organization.
- Realize it will not be business as usual.
Compliance Perspective
In the aftermath of the growing awareness that residents in nursing homes may have been the hardest hit by COVID-19, the traumatic effects on the mental health of staff members (e.g., caring for residents at great personal risk, not enough PPE and having to choose personal safety over comforting the dying) may be critical to ensuring facilities are able to provide quality care for their residents. Along with providing Trauma Informed Care assessments for their residents, facilities should consider the need to address and respond to the mental injury effects that the Coronavirus pandemic may have had on the staff members.
Discussion Points:
- Review policies and procedures for assessing residents for Trauma Informed Care and consider the need to develop appropriate response processes to address the traumatic mental health effect a crisis like COVID-19 has on caregiving staff.
- Train staff to recognize the need for Trauma Informed Care in residents and to know and respond to the signs of PTSD-like feelings they may be personally experiencing. If an EAP counseling service is available, provide the contact information so staff can reach out privately for help.
- Periodically audit by surveying staff regarding their mental health status related to their COVID-19 caregiving experience.
