Using text analysis to assess the mental health impacts of COVID-19 on rural healthcare providers

Cheryl L Beseler,Stacia Mcneely

doi:10.4148/1936-0487.1110

Abstract

The pandemic increased the stress levels of frontline healthcare providers in every country across the globe, and continues to do so. Health care providers in the rural regions of the U.S. were more vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19 due to the lack of resources and the population they serve. A qualitative study of 25 rural healthcare providers in a western U.S. state was conducted during 2020. In this report, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) was used to compare the use of emotion and reward words in 12 providers interviewed before the onset of COVID-19 on March 11, 2020, to 13 interviews conducted after COVID-19 onset. Results indicated that providers used fewer positive emotion words after COVID-19 onset compared to before COVID. Negative emotion words also decreased. Words related to the rewarding aspects of their work increased after COVID-19, but differed among the pre- and post-COVID groups. Positive emotion words was more strongly related to rewards in the post-COVID group. Providers reported concerns about access to care for those unable to be treated for the increased depression, anxiety and suicide ideation related to the pandemic. The rural health care system needs policies directed at improving patient access to care and greater funding.

Highlights

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) pandemic spread to rural areas in the United States (U.S.) later than urban areas (Healy, Tavernise, Gebeloff, & Cai, 2020)
We investigated the self-reported effects of COVID-19 in rural regions and used a novel approach to dig deeper into the data to analyze the emotional language that might be informative about mental health effects in rural providers
The results indicate trends in the impacts of the pandemic, it is not clear whether this sample of 25 providers is representative of rural health care providers in other rural areas

Summary

Introduction

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) pandemic spread to rural areas in the United States (U.S.) later than urban areas (Healy, Tavernise, Gebeloff, & Cai, 2020). The population density is lower in rural areas, which is likely to reduce transmission rates of the virus (Wang et al, 2021), the rural population has greater challenges in combating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (Sharma et al, 2020). Health care worker stress is an international experience. Many reports have been written on the topic in Chinese health care providers since they were the first to experience the challenge of coping with COVID-19. Despite the hundreds of reports from around the globe on the mental health challenges frontline health care workers were facing and continue to endure, there are few reports on the experiences of rural health care providers working in heavily agricultural areas in the U.S To understand the lived experiences of this group of frontline medical providers during the pandemic, qualitative data is needed

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Conclusion