BARCELONA, Spain: The unstable rise in COVID-19 infections in Spain after the holiday season is once again putting pressure on hospitals, threatening the mental health of doctors and nurses who have been at the very beginning of the pandemic for nearly a year.
At the del Mar Hospital in Barcelona, the capacity for emergency care has doubled and is almost full, with coronavirus patients in 80 per cent of ICU beds.
“There are 20-something-young and 80-year-olds, all age groups,” said Dr. Joan Ramon Masclans, who heads the ICU. “This is very difficult, and he’s like one patient after another.”
Even though authorities allowed gatherings of up to 10 people for Christmas and New Year’s festivities, Masclans chose not to reunite with family and spent the holidays at home with his partner.
“We have done it to preserve our health and the health of others. And when you see that this is not being done (by others) it causes a great deal of anger, adding to the fatigue, ”he said.
A study released this month by Hospital del Mar looking at the impact of the spring rise of COVID-19 on more than 9,000 health workers across Spain found that at least 2 percent of its patients suffering from depression. That’s six times higher than the general population before the pandemic, said Dr. Jordi Alonso, one of the lead researchers.
In addition, the study found that nearly half of participants were at high risk for anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks or substance and alcohol abuse problems.
Spanish health care workers are far from the only mentally affected by the pandemic. In China, rates of mental health problems among doctors and nurses were even higher, with 50 percent reporting depression, 45 percent reporting anxiety and 34 percent reporting insomnia, according to the Health Agency of the Universe.
In the UK, a study published last week by the Royal College of Physicians found that 64% of doctors said they were tired or tired. One in four sought mental health support.
“It’s very scary right now 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 an all-time high, staff are tired, and although there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that light seems to be far away.”
Dr. Aleix Carmona, a third-year anesthesiologist living in the northeastern part of Spain in Catalonia, had little ICU experience before the pandemic struck. But when surgeries were canceled, Carmona was called to the ICU at the Moisès Broggi hospital outside Barcelona to fight a virus that was little known to the world.
“In the beginning, we had a lot of adrenaline. We were very scared but we had a lot of energy, ”said Carmona. He plowed through the first weeks of the epidemic without much time for the unprecedented battle that was unfolding.
It wasn’t until the second month that he began to feel the pain of seeing for themselves how people were slowly dying and running out of breath. He asked what he should tell patients before admitting them. His first response was always to send them back, telling them it would be okay. But in some cases he knew that was not true.
“I started to have trouble sleeping and feeling anxious before every move,” Carmona said, adding that he would return home after 12 hours feeling like he had been beaten up.
For a while he could only sleep with the help of medicine. Some colleagues started taking anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs. But what really helped Carmona was a support group at his hospital, where his colleagues loaded the experiences they had bottled inside.
But not everyone joined the group. For many, asking for help would make them look unsuitable for the job.
“In our profession, we can handle a lot,” said David Oliver, spokesman for the Catalonia chapter in the SATSE nurses union. “We don’t want to take time off because we know we will add to the workload of our colleagues.”
The group of health care workers most affected, according to the study, were nursing assistants and nurses, who are predominantly women and often immigrants. They spent more time with dying COVID-19 patients, had poor working conditions and wages and were afraid of infecting family members.
Desirée Ruiz is a nurse supervisor at the emergency care unit of Hospital del Mar. Some nurses on her team have wanted to take time off work, unable to cope with the constant stress and all the deaths.
To prevent infections, patients rarely visit families, adding to their dependence on nurses. Delivering a patient’s last wish or words to relatives over the phone is particularly challenging, Ruiz said.
“This is very difficult for … people who hold the hands of these patients, even if they know they are going to die,” she said.
Ruiz, who organizes the nurses ’movements and makes sure the ICU has enough staff, finds it harder and harder to do so.
Unlike in the summer, when the number of cases fell and health workers were encouraged to take holidays, doctors and nurses have been working inadvertently since the fall, when things went awry. virus retrieval.
The latest recovery has almost doubled the number of daily cases seen in November, and now has the third highest COVID-19 infection rate in Europe and the fourth highest death toll, with more than 55,400 confirmed deaths.
But unlike many European countries, including nearby Portugal, Spain’s health minister has now rejected the ability to impose a new lock-in, subject to less severe restrictions that are less harmful to the economy. but which takes longer to reduce the rate of disease. .
Alonso fears that the latest rise in virus patients could be as devastating to the mental health of medical workers as the shock of the first months of the pandemic.
“If we want to get enough care, we also need to pay attention to the health care workers, who have suffered and are still suffering,” he said.