Sequels of the COVID-19 pandemic on prehospital care professionals

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a greater impact on the world than many would have ever expected, and in all aspects of our life, whether economically, environmentally, socially, physically, or mentally. The latter has been especially felt among frontline clinicians, who have been under extremely high pressure, dealing with a significantly higher patient load and stressful situations over a prolonged period of time and with a high number of uncertainties. In the UK, up to August 2020, there had been a noticeable increase in the number of emergency ambulance and non-urgent (NHS 111) calls, though fewer emergency department visits due to lockdowns (Flynn et al, 2020). This put frontline ambulance paramedics at an increased risk of exposure to the virus and high workload pressure.

Mental health issues among health professionals is not a new issue by any means (Bennett et al, 2004). However, the last 2 years has been an unprecedented period of time for everyone. Following the unquantifiable Brexit exodus among European National Health Service Staff (Alinier, 2019; Dalingwater, 2019), COVID-19 has added yet more pressure on the already stretched prehospital healthcare workforce. From the beginning, the pandemic has had profound effects on how clinicians worked and lived their lives, with reports of many sleeping in their car, in the hospital, or in hotel rooms between shifts to minimise the risk of contaminating family members (Viswanathan et al, 2020; Al Amiry and Maguire, 2021). Although, a clear effect on the mental health of the general population in all sectors has been noticed (Flynn et al, 2020), it is even further pronounced among the healthcare workforce (Xiong et al, 2020; Khan et al, 2022).