Frontline Health Care Workers’ Mental Health and Well-Being During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Interviews and Social Media Data
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on fractures in health care systems worldwide and continues to have a significant impact, particularly in relation to the health care workforce. Frontline staff have been exposed to unprecedented strain, and delivering care during the pandemic has affected their safety, mental health, and well-being.
Objective
This study aimed to explore the experiences of health care workers (HCWs) delivering care in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand their well-being needs, experiences, and strategies used to maintain well-being (at individual and organizational levels).
Methods
We analyzed 94 telephone interviews with HCWs and 2000 tweets about HCWs’ mental health during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results
The results were grouped under 6 themes: redeployment, clinical work, and sense of duty; well-being support and HCW’s coping strategies; negative mental health effects; organizational support; social network and support; and public and government support.
Conclusions
These findings demonstrate the need for open conversations, where staff’s well-being needs and the strategies they adopted can be shared and encouraged, rather than implementing top-down psychological interventions alone. At the macro level, the findings also highlighted the impact on HCW’s well-being of public and government support as well as the need to ensure protection through personal protective equipment, testing, and vaccines for frontline workers.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.29.22274481: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Data collection: Interviews with HCWs: The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
Consent: All participants provided consent before taking part.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains Sentences Resources A group of the authors (NVSJ, LM, CB, PCG, AB, AS, EF, SMS) prepared interview data for analysis by performing selective transcription of extracts from the … SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.29.22274481: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Data collection: Interviews with HCWs: The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
Consent: All participants provided consent before taking part.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains Sentences Resources A group of the authors (NVSJ, LM, CB, PCG, AB, AS, EF, SMS) prepared interview data for analysis by performing selective transcription of extracts from the interviews and interview notes that were related to mental health and wellbeing as previously defined (Vera San Juan et al., 2021). ABsuggested: NoneSoftware and Algorithms Sentences Resources They conducted a digital analysis of co-occurring themes with betweenness centrality and frequency analysis (Dicks et al., 2021; Martin et al., 2020), and inputted it in a Microsoft Excel matrix. Microsoft Excelsuggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: The study had several limitations. The HCWs included in the study worked in London, limiting the representation of experiences in other areas of the country, limited the generalizability of our findings. HCW experiences were captured through interviews and social media, so the findings reflect perceptions, but we could not explore practices. Even though we collected data over 12 months, the last interviews were carried out in March 2021, limiting our exploration of experiences in later stages of the pandemic and it is vital to consider that perceptions and experiences of the pandemic are constantly changing. One study even concluded that anxiety levels in HCWs have increased since the pandemic was declared (Temsah, 2021). Although purposive sampling was used to obtain a varied sample in terms of gender, role and ethnicity, our sample was not entirely representative of different races, with most participants being of White British backgrounds. HCWs of different backgrounds are likely to have had different experiences and perceptions to share, limiting the generalizability but also the richness of our data. Implications & Recommendations for Future Research: The psychological reactions of the population during an infectious disease pandemic play a crucial role in determining not only the progression of the pandemic but also the emotional distress and wellbeing during and after peaks of infection. This is even more important to consider for HCWs, as they are at the ...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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