References
Paramedic emotional labour during COVID-19
Abstract
Emotional preparedness is required for emergency paramedic practice. Emotional labour underpins the role of paramedics at the frontline of patient care. During the COVID-19 pandemic where patients are at their most vulnerable, it is imperative that paramedics can offer both reassurance to parents and be empowered in the face of the virus. Dealing with COVID-19 has put stress on paramedics, for whom psychological wellbeing is imperative to their capacity to cope in exceptionally challenging circumstances, where death has so frequently characterised the most severe cases of the virus.
Emotional preparedness is not a new phenomenon for paramedic and emergency service healthcare personnel across the world (Buick et al, 2020; Kent et al, 2020). However, the authors believe that the emergence and rapid spread of COVID-19 globally in the current pandemic has had an impact on human emotion, distress and loss of the greatest resonance since the Second World War. As a consequence, experiences in frontline healthcare, of which paramedics are an integral and invaluable part, have irrevocably changed in terms of everyday clinical and professional practice.
While the pandemic has affected all health and social care professional groups, the context of specifically providing acute emergency care for COVID-19 patients is nowhere more evident than in paramedic practice (Bergen-Cico et al, 2020).
A high proportion of patients with COVID-19 present as severely oxygen-deprived and in need of urgent hospitalisation (Grasselli et al, 2020), which sadly has become a new norm for paramedic and frontline healthcare personnel. In addition, the disease is highly contagious and potentially deadly (as evidenced by the mortality figures of medical staff, allied health professionals and carers); there are immeasurable pressures on paramedic staff in providing care and on families who are often having what may be the final opportunity to say goodbye to loved ones as they are transported away for oxygen therapy and sometimes ventilation.
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