RT Journal Article
T1 Addressing Acute Stress among Professionals Caring for COVID-19 Patients: Lessons Learned during the First Outbreak in Spain (March-April 2020).
A1 Mira, José Joaquín
A1 Cobos-Vargas, Ángel
A1 Astier-Peña, Maria Pilar
A1 Pérez-Pérez, Pastora
A1 Carrillo, Irene
A1 Guilabert, Mercedes
A1 Pérez-Jover, Virtudes
A1 Fernández-Peris, Cesar
A1 Vicente-Ripoll, María Asunción
A1 Silvestre-Busto, Carmen
A1 Lorenzo-Martínez, Susana
A1 Martin-Delgado, Jimmy
A1 Aibar, Carlos
A1 Aranaz, Jesús
K1 SARS Virus
K1 acute stress
K1 burnout
K1 fatigue
K1 health personnel
K1 hospitals
K1 moral damage
K1 moral labour
K1 pandemic
K1 primary health care
K1 well-being
AB Objectives: To describe lessons learned during the first COVID-19 outbreak in developing urgent interventions to strengthen healthcare workers' capacity to cope with acute stress caused by health care pressure, concern about becoming infected, despair of witnessing patients' suffering, and critical decision-making requirements of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic during the first outbreak in Spain. Methods: A task force integrated by healthcare professionals and academics was activated following the first observations of acute stress reactions starting to compromise the professionals' capacity for caring COVID-19 patients. Literature review and qualitative approach (consensus techniques) were applied. The target population included health professionals in primary care, hospitals, emergencies, and nursing homes. Interventions designed for addressing acute stress were agreed and disseminated. Findings: There are similarities in stressors to previous outbreaks, and the solutions devised then may work now. A set of issues, interventions to cope with, and their levels of evidence were defined. Issues and interventions were classified as: adequate communication initiative to strengthen work morale (avoiding information blackouts, uniformity of criteria, access to updated information, mentoring new professionals); resilience and recovery from physical and mental fatigue (briefings, protecting the family, regulated recovery time during the day, psychological first aid, humanizing care); reinforce leadership of intermediate commands (informative leadership, transparency, realism, and positive messages, the current state of emergency has not allowed for an empirical analysis of the effectiveness of proposed interventions. Sharing information to gauge expectations, listening to what professionals need, feeling protected from threats, organizational flexibility, encouraging teamwork, and leadership that promotes psychological safety have led to more positive responses. Attention to the needs of individuals must be combined with caring for the teams responsible for patient care. Conclusions: Although the COVID-19 pandemic has a more devastating effect than other recent outbreaks, there are common stressors and lessons learned in all of them that we must draw on to increase our capacity to respond to future healthcare crises.
YR 2021
FD 2021-11-16
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10668/25990
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10668/25990
LA en
DS RISalud
RD Apr 7, 2025