A study designed to address the psychological and social distress of COVID-19 on Australia’s frontline health workers is receiving ‘remarkable’ interest with many doctors sharing their experiences throughout the pandemic.
Respiratory physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and co-lead investigator, Dr Natasha Smallwood, developed the study, Future Proofing Frontline Healthcare Workers in times of Pandemic and Other Crises, after seeing the fear and disruption among colleagues grow as the impact of coronavirus began to take its toll.
The study explores the social, work and mental health effects experienced by frontline health workers during the current pandemic and sets out to identify risk factors that contribute to poorer mental health.
Dr Smallwood told the limbic that more than 4,000 responses had been received in just the first 10 days of the survey going live in Victoria. It’s now on track to being one of the largest in the world on the topic.
The ‘extraordinary’ response to the survey along with grant funding has pushed the originally intended ‘small-scale’ survey to a large national study with researchers now aiming to reach a sample size of 15,000 participants.
Dr Smallwood says the immense distress and disruption felt by many healthcare workers – and the need to share those experiences – has driven the high engagement with the study.
“We’ve all experienced significant upheaval over an incredibly short period of time – we’ve had to change the entire way we manage care while also trying to balance homeschooling, not being able to see family and the personal threat to our own mortality and the fear that we might infect our children, elderly parents, colleagues.
There has been significant upheaval in our lives and it’s occurred over an incredibly short period of time. To experience so much social change, so much change professionally and the distress that causes, is a huge shock to the system and and I think people really want to share what this distress and disruption has meant to them.”
Social isolation and lack of support