Stressful to be Exposed to Human Suffering and Death

Stressful to be Exposed to Human Suffering and Death
Introduction
During the pandemic many healthcare workers reported burnout and poorer mental health that before the pandemic. More than 60% of them reported that the pandemic affected their mental health negatively CITATION Hai21 \l 1033 (Mensik, 2021). A further 13% of the surveyed HCWs(health care workers) respondents reported that they were accessing mental health services CITATION Hai21 \l 1033 (Mensik, 2021). There is a big difference between those who reported being affected by the pandemic adversely and those who accessed mental health services. Those who have been unable to access mental health services have cited busy schedule, inability to get off-time at work, feeling afraid or embarrassed and not being able to afford the services CITATION Hai21 \l 1033 (Mensik, 2021). One of the ways to reduce the number of HCWs unable to access mental health services is to avail them for free. This will remove on the major barriers to helping HCWs access mental health services CITATION CDC18 \l 1033 (CDC, 2018).
It is stressful to be exposed to human suffering and death. Patients suffer from different ailments and compassionate HCWs cannot help but resonate with them. For example, children ailing from terminal diseases like cancer, patients on palliative care, very ill patients hospitalized in ICU, arson, accident and terrorism victims. All these factors can take an emotional toll on the HCWs and affect their mental health. All these illnesses and death is traumatic to the HCWs and they develop it in their line of work CITATION Nia16 \l 1033 (Nia, Lehto, Ebadi, & Peyrovi, 2016). Free mental health services should be availed to them because it is like an occupational hazard CITATION Dim18 \l 1033 (Chatzigianni, Tsounis, Markopoulos, & Sarafis, 2018). If other professions provide safety equipment for their workers to protect the workers from work- related injuries, then HCWs deserve to be protected from work related injuries. Mining workers have to wear specific type of boots, helmets, gloves and they are insured against work related injuries. Similarly, healthcare workers ought to be protected from mental trauma that emanates from the nature of the work they have to deal with. Witnessing death, patients on palliative care, accident and terrorism victims, burn victims etc carries and emotional trauma on all HCWs. However, much they are exposed to these things, they cannot ‘get used’ to them because it is a different person suffering each time and they can relate to their pain CITATION Nia16 \l 1033 (Nia, Lehto, Ebadi, & Peyrovi, 2016). Additionally, HCWs work long hours at times, they have different shifts that can make them miss important events in their families, they have to take extra care to protect themselves from contagious diseases and infecting their family members etc. These events leave emotional scars and it is only fair that they are protected or treated for such CITATION Nur20 \l 1033 (Çelmeçe & Menekay, 2020). Thus, free mental health is aimed at treating HCWs for the ‘injuries’ they suffer in their line of job. The mental services should be free just as other workers in other industries are offered safety equipment to protect their bodies, HCWs ought to be protected from work-related emotional trauma.
Secondly, there are unique pressures and uncertainties that come with extending human life and alleviating suffering. These pressures come in the form of the nature of decisions an individual has to make in a bid to extend human life and or alleviate human suffering. Making life and death decisions often with very limited information and quickly carries very high risk and no margin of error is expected. Many times, HCWs get it wrong and some individuals may die or suffer because of decisions made by a medical professional. While their training and experience on the job reduces the chance of such things happening it cannot completely eliminate them CITATION Ruo15 \l 1033 (Ruotsalainen, Verbeek, Mariné, & Serra, 2015). Many experienced HCWs have made certain decisions that risked the life of a patient in their career. There are many stressors that can affect healthcare professionals. When HCWs are affected by these stressors and it affects their mental health, they are bound to make more mistakes. Mistakes in this case may be administering the wrong drug or wrong dosage, failure to note when patients need help, wrong diagnosis and in some cases errors before, during or after surgery. All these mistakes could easily lead to loss of life. Concisely, the actions, inactions and mistakes of healthcare professionals have dire consequences. Therefore, they should always be equipped to navigate the stressors that they may encounter at home and in their line of work. This is mainly to ensure that their productivity and performance remains high or in the very least, they avoid mistakes which could cost lives CITATION Hal16 \l 1033 (Hall, Johnson, Watt, Tsipa, & O’Connor, 2016). The best way to help them is to ensure that they are always mentally healthy even after making hard decisions where they were unsure of the effect of their decisions and actions. They need to be treated for the trauma that comes with their work to help them move on from these work-related pressured and maintain their efficacy on the job. Because we understand that this job comes with hard decisions, it is only fair that we extend free mental health services to HCWs to protect their mental health.
Healthcare work is not easy and needs dedication and selfless service to serve the patients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers around the world worked around the clock to help patients as healthcare facilities were stretched to their limit CITATION Søv21 \l 1033 (Søvold, et al., 2021). While governments could build temporary, semi-permanent and permanent healthcare facilities to meet demand, developing human resource capacity cannot be done in an instant. Therefore, the available medical professionals were stretched thin to meet the demand. They worked long hours away from their families and at the expense of their mental health to serve the people. Their selflessness was reflected by the number of lives they saved and while they deserve recognition and compensation for that, they also need to be treated for the emotional damage they suffered through the pandemic. Some nurses had to isolate from their families to avoid infecting them should they contract COVID-19 in their line of duty. Some reported living in hotels, in their colleagues’ home and sending the family of their colleagues away, rvs, among other inconvenient places CITATION Søv21 \l 1033 (Søvold, et al., 2021). This coupled with long working hours and other issues affected health professionals’ health adversely. The pandemic is not an isolated case of how healthcare workers risk their lives for their patients. Previous disease outbreaks like Ebola among others have called on healthcare workers to do more. They sacrificed to treat the sick and prevent further spread of contagious disease. Some lost their lives to these diseases. For those who lost colleagues, it takes an emotional toll on them. Various studies reported deterioration of mental health among healthcare professional during the pandemic CITATION Koc21 \l 1033 (Kock, et al., 2021). According to CITATION Rhi22 \l 1033 (Chatterjee, 2022), ‘more than 70% of health care workers in the country have symptoms of anxiety and depression, 38% have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and 15% have had recent thoughts of suicide or self-harm.’ Unfortunately, even some low-quality access to mental health is not enough. CITATION Rhi22 \l 1033 (Chatterjee, 2022) narrates how she still lost her friend despite having access to mental health services and support from friends and family. Her friend still struggled with mental health until he committed suicide. This highlights the need to remove the barriers to access to mental health and reduce the stressors because it is very likely for mental health to persist even when under medication. The pandemic is not an isolated case about their work, but it highlighted the difficulty and dedication it takes to do it every day. The public ought to It is only fair that they are accorded the medical help they deserve because their selfless acts led the world through the pandemic.