Stress slamming medical staffs amid COVID-19. This Texas counseling group offers help
Critical care nurse Erica Hicks has seen her share of 12-hour work shifts since March, when the coronavirus exploded in Texas and across the country.
Since then, she’s spent hour after hour helping in emergency rooms or COVID-19 hospital floors, fearing the unknown against a virus for which doctors and scientists have had few answers.
Frontline healthcare workers are being exposed to a virus that as of Sunday had killed more than 1,800 people in Texas and more than 110,000 in the United States.
Some doctors and nurses have stayed away from their families for weeks, talking to them only on cell phones.
And they’re treating COVID-19 patients who are isolated in their rooms with no family around because of rules imposed by area hospitals.
“It’s just been a roller coaster of emotions,” Hicks said recently in an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The stress level for healthcare workers has been through the roof these last few weeks.
Hicks hasn’t been alone. There are more than 400,000 Texas medical professionals who are fighting through the stress of battling the coronavirus.
To help in Texas, a group of mental health agencies and business leaders formed a nonprofit organization for healthcare workers, Mental Health for Heroes.
“They (healthcare workers) have been trained to pick themselves up by their bootstraps no matter what and keep pressing on.,” said Fort Worth attorney Travis Patterson of the Patterson Law Group, one of the founders of the new organization. “But they are human too, and we all have our limits. We have lined up licensed clinicians who have been trained specifically in working with the medical community. We are here to help.”
More than 50 mental health licensed clinicians from all over Texas have been trained to work with medical staffs.
To receive help, healthcare workers are encouraged to fill out a form at this website: https://mentalhealthforheroes.org/
As of early May, there had been at least 10 healthcare workers who have sought help from the new support group.
“They (healthcare workers) believe that ‘I’m here to help others’,” said Dr. Brenda Tillman of The Readiness Group. “But they are in need of help just like anyone else who is going through this.”
Initial sessions are free, and the goal is to provide all sessions at no cost.
One of the first studies of mental health among medical staffs was released in late March by JAMA Network Open. More than 1,200 health care workers from 34 hospitals in China providing COVID-19 care were surveyed from Jan. 29 to Feb. 3.
The study showed frontline healthcare workers caring directly for patients with COVID-19 reported higher levels of severe mental health symptoms than those in secondary roles.
Women were significantly more likely than men to report severe symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress, according to the study.
Here are some of the factors contributing to the distress of nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists, aides, and other healthcare workers providing direct frontline care to patients with COVID-19:
▪ Concerns about infecting family members with coronavirus from workplace exposures, especially family members who are older, immunocompromised, or chronically ill.
▪ Anxiety about assuming new or unfamiliar clinical roles and expanded workloads in caring for patients with COVID-19
▪ Emotional strain and physical exhaustion when caring for growing numbers of acutely ill patients of all ages who have the potential to deteriorate rapidly
▪ Caring for coworkers who may become critically ill and sometimes die from COVID-19
▪ Shortages of personal protective equipment that intensify fears of coronavirus exposure at work leading to serious illness.
Mental Health for Heroes is funded through a GoFundMe campaign. As of Sunday, more than $100,000 had been raised for its goal of $250,000.
A $1,000 donation will provide 20 crisis intervention sessions or 10 counseling sessions, officials said.
Hicks, the critical care nurse, is on the board of directors for Mental Health for Heroes.
“This is so needed,” Hicks said referring to the new program. “The fear of the unknown is with us every day.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
