What support do frontline workers want? A qualitative study of health and social care workers' experiences and views of psychosocial support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jo Billings,Talya Greene,Tamara Ondruskova,Emilia Soulios,Nada Abou Seif,Michael Bloomfield,Siobhan Hegarty,Vincenzo De Luca

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0256454

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a significant burden on the mental health and wellbeing of frontline health and social care workers. The need to support frontline staff has been recognised. However, there is to date little research specifically on how best to support the mental health needs of frontline workers, and none on their own experiences and views about what might be most helpful. We set out to redress this research gap by qualitatively exploring UK frontline health and social care workers' own experiences and views of psychosocial support during the pandemic. Frontline health and social care workers were recruited purposively through social media and by snowball sampling via healthcare colleagues. Workers who volunteered to take part in the study were interviewed remotely following a semi-structured interview guide. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed by the research team following the principles of Reflexive Thematic Analysis. We conducted 25 interviews with frontline workers from a variety of professional groups working in health and social care settings across the UK. Themes derived from our analysis showed that workers' experiences and views about psychosocial support were complex. Peer support was many workers' first line of support but could also be experienced as a burden. Workers were ambivalent about support shown by organisations, media and the public. Whilst workers valued psychological support services, there were many disparities in provision and barriers to access. The results of this study show that frontline health and social care workers are likely to need a flexible system of support including peer, organisational and professional support. More research is needed to fully unpack the structural, systemic and individual barriers to accessing psychosocial support. Greater collaboration, consultation and co-production of support services and their evaluation is warranted.

Highlights

On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organisation declared severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing COVID-19, to be a worldwide pandemic [1]
The results of this study show that frontline health and social care workers are likely to need a flexible system of support including peer, organisational and professional support
Quantitative research emerging from the UK [2,3,4] and around the world [5, 6] has demonstrated a significant mental health burden experienced by frontline workers in response to COVID-19, with elevated rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidality reported

Summary

Introduction

On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organisation declared severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing COVID-19, to be a worldwide pandemic [1]. In the UK, it has been estimated that 45–58% of the frontline health and social care workforce met criteria for clinically significant levels of anxiety, depression and/or PTSD shortly following the first wave of the pandemic [2, 3]. This is amongst a workforce already under considerable strain pre-COVID-19, as evidenced by the growing incidence of stress, burnout, depression, drug and alcohol dependence and suicide across all groups of health professionals, worldwide [7]. There is to date little research on how best to support the mental health needs of frontline workers, and none on their own experiences and views about what might be most helpful

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Results

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Conclusion