Support Seeking Among Essential Healthcare Workers and First Responders during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The present study examined essential healthcare workers’ (HCWs) and first responder’s perceptions about the effectiveness of the quality and quantity of social support received in light of the emotional experiences throughout the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the psychological distress they experienced working during that time. Although healthcare sectors had supports in place, this study used a mixed method approach of questionnaires and interviews, to better understand the healthcare workers’ perceptions about what did and did not work to help them maintain their sense of well-being and ability to work successfully during the extraordinary worldwide health care crisis caused by COVID19. Understanding the association between support provided and efficacy of support offers important information about how the healthcare system can implement formal and informal, macro and micro level services to HCWs and First Responders. Integrating support systems into practice can assist in counteracting adverse emotional responses such as anxiety, depression, trauma related stressors, and burnout, as well as offer preventive mental health services for healthcare workers. The experience of psychological distress was ascertained by measures participants completed in a Qualtrics survey assessing burnout, depressive symptoms, and secondary traumatic stress. Perceived social support, frequency of use of social support and perceived effectiveness of that support were evaluated by the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and Healthcare Workers Social support questionnaire. The results found that the participants of this study perceived moderate levels of social support. They reported low levels of depressive symptoms, moderate levels of burnout, and moderate levels of secondary traumatic stress. However, 25% of the participants reported high levels of secondary traumatic stress. Qualitative analyses of Zoom interviews of Health Care Workers and First Responders collected from a larger study (Chisholm & Godfrey, in press) suggested that access to supportive services which were perceived to be helpful may have mitigated the adverse effects of negative psychological experiences for essential HCWs and first responders. The findings of this study indicate that symptoms associated with emotional exhaustion contributed to higher reports of secondary traumatic stress symptoms. It was also found that the more helpful HCWs perceived family support to be, the less symptoms of secondary traumatic stress they reported.