Healthcare workers are facing a “tsunami” of distress and anxiety after a year of dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown.
While most frontline workers are trained in mental health, experts say this training is largely biomedical. As a result, many of them are no better than the rest of the population at recognising and managing difficult situations.
UKZN associate professor Suvira Ramlall, head of psychiatry at King Dinuzulu Hospital in Durban, said many healthcare workers struggled to look inward and care for their mental health.
A survey the university conducted among KZN healthcare workers during the pandemic showed high levels of depression, anxiety, stress and trauma.
Yet almost 75% of participants felt they were unsupported by their employer, even though 90% said their institutions had occupational health clinics.
While stigma was partly responsible for many not seeking help, Ramlall said the more common reason was low mental health literacy, low prioritisation of mental health needs and poor understanding of its importance in overall wellbeing.
“There are no platforms where we are formally schooled in how to recognise and manage painful or difficult emotional states,” she said this week during a UKZN webinar about burnout among healthcare workers during the pandemic.
“Most of us learn passively from our parents, who may not always have been the best role models, and expressing emotional distress is still viewed as a sign of weakness.
“Our training of healthcare workers is still very much a linear and biomedical-focused approach.
“The pandemic has exposed our vulnerability ... and the tsunami of distress and stress has been coupled with restrictions on our access to traditional support systems.”
While lockdown restricted travel, Ramlall said many health workers needed to “travel inward”, but this was a journey not many people liked.
UKZN senior lecturer Saeeda Paruk, a child psychiatrist at King Dinuzulu, said a recent study of doctors at state hospitals showed about 59% prevalence of burnout.
Health workers’ anxiety, fear of Covid-19 infection and apprehension about having to manage a new and severe disease were worsened by working in low-resource settings “often characterised by staff shortages and poor psychosocial support, long hours and heavy patient loads”.
This experience left many with feelings of burnout and depression, which when not treated could erode their professional behaviour even further.
“Productivity and the ability of a doctor or a healthcare worker to provide care for the patients may be significantly impacted on,” said Faruk.
However, she paid tribute to healthcare workers for their grit during the pandemic.
“We also have shown during this period to have remarkable resilience, and our healthcare workers have served our country with major courage and major sacrifices during this time. So I think it’s time that we now start serving them by looking after their health as well.”
