As pandemic fatigue sets in, trauma and exhaustion plague health care workers

As pandemic fatigue sets in, trauma and exhaustion plague health care workers

NY Times:

 ....  Doctors, paramedics and nurses’ aides have been hailed in the United States as frontline Covid-19 warriors, but gone are the days when people applauded workers outside hospitals and on city streets. A year into the pandemic, with emergency rooms packed again, vaccines in short supply and more contagious variants of the virus threatening to unleash a fresh wave of infections, medical workers are feeling burned out and unappreciated.

Some health care experts are calling for a national effort to track the psychological well-being of medical professionals, much like the federal health program that monitors workers who responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

So far, the federal government has shown little interest in addressing what Dr. Victor J. Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine described as a “parallel pandemic” of psychological trauma among health care workers.

He and other experts say the government should start by making a concerted effort to accurately count medical worker infections and fatalities. ...

Thousands of health care workers have already paid the ultimate price for their dedication. Since March, more than 3,300 nurses, doctors, social workers and physical therapists have died from Covid-19, according to a tally by Kaiser Health News and The Guardian.

Dr. Donald Pathman, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he had been struck by the early results of a study he has conducted on the pandemic’s effect on clinicians who serve in poor communities. Many of the 2,000 medical, dental and mental health professionals who have participated in the survey so far say they are disillusioned.

“There is a lot of personal trauma,” Dr. Pathman said. “Many people have been scarred by their experiences during the pandemic, and they will look to leave their practices.” ...