New study shows fear, psychological trauma suffered by healthcare workers during pandemic
Research conducted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal shows that the psyches of health professionals psyches has been enormously affected by the deaths they have witnessed due to Covid-19.
The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in partnership with UKZN medical school on Thursday revealed the results of the survey looking at the impact of Covid-19 on health workers.
The university's professor Mosa Moshabela said research shows that healthcare professionals are extremely concerned about the possibility of passing on infections to members of their families.
"Although we hear of these stories this is not something that I would say we pay enough attention to. The personal risk was far lower than the risk of passing it on to a family member," Moshabela says.
He says there is a high level of psychological distress among healthcare workers.
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Moshabela noted that "the severe distress was about 25%, one in four nurses were experiencing severe psychological distress".
The research also revealed that nurses had a higher risk perception - which is the perception workers have in terms of contracting the virus - compared to other health professionals.
Moshabela has attributed this to the little attention nurses received during the pandemic.
"You'd see surprisingly the provinces that had the highest-burden had relatively lower perceptions of risk.
"Nurse practitioners had the highest levels of risk perceptions. We cannot say that this is not related to the fact they received limited attention compared to medical practitioners in terms of training."
