8
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Witnesses and Victims Both: Healthcare Workers and Grief in the Time of COVID-19

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Heathcare Workers (HCWs) recognize their responsibility to support the bereaved loved ones of our patients, but we also must attend to our own professional and personal grief in the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 grief is occurring in the setting of incomplete grief, disenfranchised grief, fractured US governmental leadership, and evidence of great mistrust, systemic racism, and social injustice. In the intensity and pervasiveness of COVID-19, HCW fears for themselves, their colleagues, and their own loved ones are often in conflict with professional commitments. Even at the dawn of promising national and global vaccination programs, significant HCW morbidity and mortality in COVID-19 has already become clear, will continue to grow, and these effects likely will last far into the future. Given the risks of complicated grief for HCWs in the setting of COVID-19 deaths, individual HCWs must put every effort into their own preparation for these deaths as well as into their own healthy grieving. Equally importantly, our healthcare systems have a primary responsibility both to prepare HCWs and to support them in their anticipatory and realized grief. Special attention must be paid to our HCW trainees, who may have not yet developed personal or professional grief management strategies and are coming into healthcare practice during a time of great disruption to both teaching and clinical care.

          Related collections

          Most cited references71

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: found
          Is Open Access

          Risk of COVID-19 among front-line health-care workers and the general community: a prospective cohort study

          Summary Background Data for front-line health-care workers and risk of COVID-19 are limited. We sought to assess risk of COVID-19 among front-line health-care workers compared with the general community and the effect of personal protective equipment (PPE) on risk. Methods We did a prospective, observational cohort study in the UK and the USA of the general community, including front-line health-care workers, using self-reported data from the COVID Symptom Study smartphone application (app) from March 24 (UK) and March 29 (USA) to April 23, 2020. Participants were voluntary users of the app and at first use provided information on demographic factors (including age, sex, race or ethnic background, height and weight, and occupation) and medical history, and subsequently reported any COVID-19 symptoms. We used Cox proportional hazards modelling to estimate multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of our primary outcome, which was a positive COVID-19 test. The COVID Symptom Study app is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04331509. Findings Among 2 035 395 community individuals and 99 795 front-line health-care workers, we recorded 5545 incident reports of a positive COVID-19 test over 34 435 272 person-days. Compared with the general community, front-line health-care workers were at increased risk for reporting a positive COVID-19 test (adjusted HR 11·61, 95% CI 10·93–12·33). To account for differences in testing frequency between front-line health-care workers and the general community and possible selection bias, an inverse probability-weighted model was used to adjust for the likelihood of receiving a COVID-19 test (adjusted HR 3·40, 95% CI 3·37–3·43). Secondary and post-hoc analyses suggested adequacy of PPE, clinical setting, and ethnic background were also important factors. Interpretation In the UK and the USA, risk of reporting a positive test for COVID-19 was increased among front-line health-care workers. Health-care systems should ensure adequate availability of PPE and develop additional strategies to protect health-care workers from COVID-19, particularly those from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds. Additional follow-up of these observational findings is needed. Funding Zoe Global, Wellcome Trust, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, National Institutes of Health Research, UK Research and Innovation, Alzheimer's Society, National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: found

            Understanding and Addressing Sources of Anxiety Among Health Care Professionals During the COVID-19 Pandemic

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events?

              Many people are exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events at some point in their lives, and yet they continue to have positive emotional experiences and show only minor and transient disruptions in their ability to function. Unfortunately, because much of psychology's knowledge about how adults cope with loss or trauma has come from individuals who sought treatment or exhibited great distress, loss and trauma theorists have often viewed this type of resilience as either rare or pathological. The author challenges these assumptions by reviewing evidence that resilience represents a distinct trajectory from the process of recovery, that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma is more common than is often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                J Pain Symptom Manage
                J Pain Symptom Manage
                Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
                Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
                0885-3924
                1873-6513
                6 February 2021
                6 February 2021
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Division of Palliative Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
                [2 ]Center for Palliative and Supportive Care, Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics, and Palliative Care, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham
                [3 ]O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham
                [4 ]Bethel AME Church, Boston, MA
                [5 ]Ministry Studies, Harvard Divinity School
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding Author: Michael W. Rabow, MD, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer, University of California, San Francisco, 1825 4th Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94158, Telephone: 415-885-7671
                Article
                S0885-3924(21)00164-0
                10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2021.01.139
                7864782
                33556494
                414e88c9-9361-4cff-b06c-cece52b273fc
                © 2021 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                Categories
                Special Article

                grief,complicated grief,healthcare workers,covid-19
                grief, complicated grief, healthcare workers, covid-19

                Comments

                Comment on this article

                scite_

                Similar content874

                Cited by31

                Most referenced authors744