BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – The increasing increase in COVID-19 infections in Spain after the holiday season stresses hospitals again and endangers the mental health of doctors and nurses who have been at the forefront of the pandemic for almost a year.
At Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, the capacity for critical care has more than doubled and almost full, with 80% of ICU beds occupied by coronavirus patients.
“There are 20-year-olds and 80-year-olds, all age groups,” said Dr. Joan Ramon Masclans, who heads the ICU. “This is very difficult and he is one patient after another.”
Although authorities allowed meetings of up to ten people for the Christmas and New Year celebrations, Masclans chose not to join his family and spent the holidays at home with his partner.
“We did it to preserve our health and the health of others. And when you see that this is not being done (by others), it causes significant anger, which adds to the fatigue, ”he said.
A study published this month by the Hospital del Mar on the impact of the rise in COVID-19 in the spring on more than 9,000 health workers across Spain found that at least 28% suffered from major depression. This is six times the rate of the general population before the pandemic, said Dr. Jordi Alonso, one of the leading researchers.
In addition, the study found that nearly half of the participants were at high risk for anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, or substance and alcohol abuse problems.
Spanish health workers are far from the only ones who have suffered psychologically from the pandemic. In China, levels of mental disorders among doctors and nurses were even higher, with 50% depression, 45% anxiety and 34% insomnia, according to the World Health Organization.
In the UK, a survey published last week by the Royal College of Physicians found that 64% of doctors reported feeling tired or exhausted. One in four sought help for mental health.
“Right now it’s pretty horrible in the world of medicine,” Dr Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in a statement accompanying the study. “Hospital admissions are at the highest level in history, staff are exhausted, and while there is light at the end of the tunnel, that light seems a long way off.”
Dr. Aleix Carmona, a third-year anesthesiologist living in the northeastern region of Catalonia, did not have much experience in the ICU before the success of the pandemic. But as the surgeries were canceled, Carmona was summoned to the ICU at the Moisès Broggi Hospital, outside Barcelona, to fight a virus of which the world knew very little.
“At first we had a lot of adrenaline. We were very scared, but we had a lot of energy “, recalled Carmona. He worked during the first weeks of the pandemic without having much time to process the unprecedented battle that was unfolding.
It wasn’t until after the second month that he began to feel the toll of seeing first hand how people died slowly as they ran out of breath. It was considered what to tell patients before intubating them. Their initial reaction had always been to reassure them, to tell them it would go well. But in some cases I knew this was not true.
“I started having trouble sleeping and a feeling of anxiety before each shift,” Carmona said, adding that she would return home after 12 hours feeling beaten.
For a while he could only sleep with the help of medication. Some colleagues began taking antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications. But what really helped Carmona was a support group at her hospital, where her co-workers unloaded the experiences they had bottled up inside.
But not everyone joined the group. For many, asking for help would seem inappropriate for the job.
“In our profession, we can support a lot,” said David Oliver, spokesman for the Catalonia chapter of the SATSE nurses’ union. “We don’t want to take time off because we know we’ll add to our colleagues’ workload.”
According to the study, the most affected group of health workers were nurses and nursing assistants, who are overwhelmingly women and often immigrants. They spent more time with dying COVID-19 patients, faced poor working conditions and wages, and feared infecting relatives.
Desirée Ruiz is the supervising nurse in the critical care unit at Hospital del Mar. Some nurses on her team have asked to take time off work without being able to cope with the constant stress and all the deaths.
To prevent infections, patients are rarely allowed family visits, which increases their reliance on nurses. Delivering the patient’s last wishes or words to relatives over the phone is especially difficult, Ruiz said.
“This is very difficult for … people who take the hand of these patients, even though they know they will end up dying,” he said.
Ruiz, who organizes nursing shifts and makes sure the ICU always has the right staff, makes it increasingly difficult.
Unlike the summer, when the number of cases was reduced and health professionals were encouraged to take vacations, doctors and nurses have been working non-stop since the autumn, when cases of the virus resumed. .
The latest resurgence has almost doubled the number of daily cases seen in November and Spain now has the third highest COVID-19 infection rate in Europe and the fourth death toll, with more than 55,400 confirmed fatalities.
But, unlike many European countries, including neighboring Portugal, the Spanish Minister of Health has ruled out for now the possibility of a new closure, relying instead on less drastic restrictions that are not so detrimental to the economy, but take longer to decrease the rate of infections.
Alonso fears that the latest wave of patients with viruses could be as detrimental to the mental health of medical staff as the shock of the first months of the pandemic.
“If we want to be cared for properly, we also need to take care of the health workers who have suffered and still suffer,” he said.
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