For months, health workers have been the front line of defense in the ongoing fight against COVID-19. But after several months, some have pushed themselves beyond their limits.
Tim Shelley spoke with Dr. Samuel Sears, OSF HealthCare's director of Behavioral Health Physician Services, about the toll of the pandemic on health workers, and how he's helping to manage the resulting stress and tension.
Samuel Sears: So you can't really discuss how COVID is affecting health care workers without understanding the general toll it takes on everybody. Because at the end of the day, our health care workers are people just like everyone else. So you get the general, you know, weariness and challenge that everyone's gone through the pandemic.
But then even in their work life, it's directly right in their face dealing with the challenges, both in terms of changes to the job and how the job's done. Many of them are caring directly for individuals with COVID, you know, disease that, unfortunately, has claimed many lives, and for the folks that live through it is often very challenging for the ones that end up in the hospital.
And so you really don't have them getting a whole lot of escape from that between dealing with the repercussions in their personal life, their work life. And, again, just some of the general concerns and fears that people can deal with, in taking care of folks with, you know, concerning infectious illness, that, really a lot of providers have never had to stop and think, man, yeah, I did sign up, you know, put my life on the line to help other folks. But this really kind of hammers that home in ways that maybe they've never really dealt with before in their career.
Tim Shelley: I just imagine that this kind of thing just wears you down. Especially working extra hours they make up for other colleagues who are quarantined or affected themselves and off work. I mean, it's just, it's got to be a lot of extra work beyond even what our medical staff is used to normally.
SS: And that's precisely it. When you take [the] situation that before the pandemic even struck, we knew that we were lower on providers that we needed within the country. There is a healthcare shortage across the nation, and then you add [COVID], and now we're going to have x percent of the workforce out quarantining so as to not risking getting other people sick. That's a significant strain on things.
And as people work longer hours, that does contribute to their feelings of, can I keep pushing through? What do I do to take care of myself? How do I balance these things, and taking care of oneself is so vitally important for all of this. It's just like when they get on a plane and say, okay, in the event of an emergency, you need to put on your breathing mask before you help anyone else with theirs. The same is true of taking care of yourself in the middle of this pandemic. If you're not taking care of yourself, sooner or later, you're going to break down, and then you're not going to be able to be there to help anybody else.
That's where it really is such an ethical importance, maintain good self-care, even when it feels like, I'm better than that guy, I can help out more. You really do have to make that opportunity to stop and [make taking] care of yourself the priority, orsooner or later, you're going to be the one in need of help, then, and you aren't going to be able to help.
TS: Doctor, in your position as the director of Behavioral Health Services for physicians and medical staff, what's your role in making sure that the the staff at the hospitals, and I guess everywhere within the OSF network, remain mentally and emotionally well?
SS: We've done a lot of awareness campaigning, both in terms of during physician call staff education, some of our newsletters, like The Spark, in terms of getting the information out about how important self care is, the resources for helping maintain self care, and just really the importance of really connecting with the things that help us be well. So in terms of the little things people can do every day connecting with kind of things that renew us and support us in our wellness is first and foremost.
Dr. Sears also recommended anyone struggling with stress, anxiety, or other behavioral health issues to check out OSF's free SilverCloud service.
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