References
Practitioner experiences in epidemics and pandemics in relation to COVID-19
Abstract
Background:
COVID-19 has been declared an international emergency by the World Health Organization. Despite personal concerns, frontline health professionals, such as paramedics, nurses and doctors, continue to treat patients. Ensuring these workers' mental wellbeing is supported during these stressful times is key to their maintaining good mental health in the longer term.
Aim:
To conduct a review of the literature exploring practitioners' attitudes during a pandemic.
Methods:
A scoping literature review was conducted to assess information on health professionals' attitudes during COVID-19 and previous pandemics, and to identify their main concerns and whether these were addressed. PubMed, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library and Google Scholar were searched and PRISMA guidelines were followed. Titles and abstracts were screened and emergent themes were identified and discussed.
Results:
141 articles were screened; 15 articles were sourced through Google Scholar and reference lists. There were 18 articles in the final sample. There was a lack of published data on COVID-19 at the time of writing. Themes include that health professionals' mental health may be affected during a pandemic. Their biggest concerns are infecting family members and overcoming personal anxieties to continue treating patients. Key themes in protecting staff mental health during a pandemic include increasing their understanding of how to protect themselves and their families, better confidence in personal protective equipment and good managerial communication.
Conclusions:
Practitioners experience heightened stress levels during pandemics, which may affect their mental health. This has implications for workforce resilience. More research is needed on frontline staff attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect their mental health.
Coronaviruses are responsible for many viral respiratory diseases in both humans and animals (Giwa and Desai, 2020). Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the disease COVID-19, is a novel strain of coronavirus first identified in humans in December 2019 in the Wuhan province of China (Chan et al, 2020). As with previous coronaviral strain outbreaks such as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, transmission is believed to be via respired droplets and fomites (Sohrabi et al, 2020; Wong et al, 2020).
The virulent spread of COVID-19 globally has led to the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring it an international emergency (Sohrabi et al, 2020), draconian social restrictions resulting in economic standstill, mass paranoia and a death toll of over 80 000 within a few months (WHO, 2020).
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