The Psychological Impacts of COVID-19 on Healthcare Workers

The Psychological Impacts of COVID-19 on Healthcare Workers

The proceeding is a detailed compilation of literature on the psychological impact of Covid-19 on healthcare workers in the United States. The review will first give the historical development of the psychological impact of any pandemic on healthcare workers and then provide the recent psychological impact of Covid-19 on healthcare workers. It will then analyze the lessons learned from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on health workers, and finally, the plans to evade the psychological impact of a similar pandemic on health workers.

Historical development of the Psychological Impact of the Pandemic on Health workers

Covid-19 was not the only virus that pushed healthcare workers on the verge of collapse regarding psychological implications. In history, such cases have been identified with various health issues too. According to Son et al. (2019), health workers underwent a psychological breakdown when the Middle East respiratory disease emerged in South Korea. From a total of 280 healthcare workers, almost half of the population expressed reduced resilience which sent fear into the perception and hope of other workers. Those who faced the Middle East Respiratory disease in 2015 lacked preparation to handle the outbreak, which caused most of them to develop psychological breakdowns with an immediate impact of perceived low resilience risk among the workers (Son, 2019).

Similarly, the same case was vivid when a terrifying Ebola virus was on outbreak. Chew et al. (2020) detail that emerging health issues always find healthcare workers unprepared, leaving them psychologically drained. Various psychological impacts are displayed, such as anxiety about the new disease, the guilt of watching the patient dying at your watch, depression, post-traumatic stress, anger, stigmatization as a healthcare worker and the grief of those being lost every day (Chew et al., 2020). The impact was not only limited to psychological torture, but the outbreak claimed the lives of healthcare workers at some point, terrorizing their being.