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This version is not peer-reviewed
Preprints on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2
“Yeah, it is more stressful because there is a lot of pressure at work especially you get that big people[government officials]have their patients in the ward, they keep on pushing and making sure that they get services not within the timelines that are set in the guidelines they want to get their results within an hour or even 30 minutes...So sometimes there is so much stress because there is too much pressure from the ministry and from within the hospital. You feel like you want to resign from work. The motivation of working is not there”. [Female, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“So, the mental anguish, I think, has been there. So, there has been an element from a patient perspective, delay in care…acute cases, denial of care delay in elective services to just overcrowding, limited staff, to the staffing in terms of the burnouts, being just extremely on the edge because of the COVID itself and then… it exposed the healthcare workers, to the mental anguish of being suspicious of having contracted the disease and finally having to confirm that you got the COVID-19. So, it’s been a roller coaster”. [Male, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“I had a feeling that I was being sent there to die since I didn’t have information and that fear and now you are sent to IDU where positive patients are and there was stigma around. We were working at night and we went to take tea there at night and when we left there, the colleagues boiled our cups. So, you see that kind of treatment just because someone is dealing with COVID, they want to treat differently. So, there was that stress, we were being stressed because of being treated differently”. [Male, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“Another thing is that the other colleagues in the main hospital still view us as people who have COVID, when they see us go to the main hospital that stigmatization part of it is still here. So, it’s really taking a toll on us. There is an increased level of mental stress compared to pre-COVID”.[Male, Nurse, IDU]
“Before COVID my levels were like 8. Right now, my levels are like two, because there were so many patients. I checked all the patients, I checked all the files, work was a lot, work was tasking, but now life is good, how many patients do I have? I have 13 patients; I have 4 patients in the pediatric ICU and 9 patients in the burn unit. Honestly, my stress levels have reduced to two at most”. [Female, Nutritionist, IDU]
“I was extremely worried about contracting COVID and the information out there was that when you contract COVID, you die. Some people saying ‘You will get sterilized’ and others were saying, your lifespan will reduce, if you recover, your lifespan will reduce, you see those misconceptions, it will reduce by ten years; so, I was worried”. [Male, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“Anxiety comes in terms of, what does tomorrow hold? What happens if I get COVID-19? What will happen to my children? What will happen to my spouse? What will my neighbor say if I tested positive and then my children are interacting with their children and then they will say it is you who is the source, the primary source of this COVID thing”. [Male, Clinical officer, non-IDU]
“I know I have had problems sleeping, lately I have had a lot of insomnia. So, for the last year, I have been taking a lot of sleep medication just to sleep. I find myself so tired when I wake up. I used to be an 8 o’clock person to work. Nowadays I think I am at work at 9 and 9:30. I feel lethargic and tired, how do I say it…no morale very, very... low morale”. [Female, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“You know there is a time when you don’t feel like talking to people, you don’t have an appetite…yeah those are the feelings that I have had in the past”. [Male, Pharmaceutical technologist, IDU]
“A lot there is so much demand for patient care there and also just anxious especially when we don’t have…sometimes we don’t have the right PPE and we still want patient care to be taken care of… So, we carry a lot of fatigue and anxiety when we are doing calls, especially with the crisis of not having PPEs sometimes or with the oxygen outrages”. [Female, Nurse, IDU]
“Of course, I am not mentally stable, that is what I can say, because having mental health illness doesn’t have to be symptomatic but of course that worries me…we have lost close colleagues out of it so it has affected my usual stability because now I’m living in fear. If I lose my colleagues I go into panic. If I lose my seniors I go into a panic, so I have been quite unstable for this period that we have been having COVID”. [Female, Clinical officer, IDU]
“Before we used to mix freely amongst ourselves, we used to share but now you find that if that social life is not there, you cannot sit with colleagues to give a story, to talk about your weekend experience and stuff like that… you may have something that you need to tell someone, not on phone but one on one so you are like now am going to sit with her and I don’t know where she was… let me just keep to myself and it is still eating you inside”. [Female, Nurse, non-IDU]
“Being broke can give you hypertension if you try it. Depression and hypertension because as I told you we used to work in locum, so that was very stressful we have that financial aspect so despite the tax reduction that the government gave us, there is nothing much we can do in terms of effect. Secondly, now the risk that you have because of work, for work that you are not being paid for. So, to me, it was quite stressful”. [Female, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“Okay in our section we have counselors with us, and when we are discussing especially on COVID experiences they help take care of stress, so if you feel you need them, they are readily available”. [Female, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“So, I am getting support from my colleagues and also my family members, they also pray for me and the church members, they always communicate to me… Yeah, those are the people who have given me the strength to move on”. [Female, Nurse, non-IDU]
“In Kenyatta, they don’t have any support, my dear, what support do they have? They don’t have any support. Actually, the colleague that I told you about has been battling mental health for close to 15 years. The support offered was after making a plea to the chairman, a very nice gentleman. But for us, at Kenyatta, no one is interested in your mental health. In fact, as a resident, I have to pay consultation fees, and for everything else, I have to join the queue”. [Female, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“So, the patients, the psychological support has been resourceful but for the healthcare workers, I don’t know where it fits, I can’t say because if you ask me, ‘Do you need a counselor?’ I will tell you maybe I don’t need a counselor”. [Male, Nutritionist, IDU]
“Probably not, and especially departments or units where there is no psychological support, let me put myself in a department which doesn’t have the psychological support, the discussions that we normally have, so you could find that people could go into complete depression, others could not even be able to report to work. So, I would say the measures were not adequate. Yeah”. [Male, Laboratory technologist, non-IDU]
“Offered I think yes, but taken up I think no. Yeah, if they have you can always go but ah! [sigh] I always do not go, let me handle myself in my way…how do you go to people who know you? Okay as much as they are supporting us, we are still colleagues…I cannot come to you and then meet you in the corridor the following day, I will be uncomfortable. So, as much as it has been offered, taking it up is just a challenge.” [Female, Social worker, non-IDU]
“Mental health comes from our perception of the environment we live in. So, let us address the basics before we go to mental health. There are scientific theoretical models for example the social determinants of mental health, so if you take care of someone’s physiological needs, like security, food, to have good medical care those are things that will take care of the mental health status. Let us address the basics, and then you will end up addressing the mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, fears, and unhealthy behaviors of health care providers”.[Male, Nurse, non-IDU].
“Okay within our set up even with or without COVID, there should be a way of debriefing our issues, we should have a psychotherapy kind of a thing, a counseling in our unit, not necessarily doors but they could be coming in weekly, for some kind of group therapy…okay some conditions are very traumatizing, like you may get a very helpless situation where you can’t help the patient and with that, you carry it in your heart for several days even years, it increases your fear in life, you put it like “what if it was me?”, We may have a debriefing once in a while but we don’t have such kinds of initiatives in our department. We don’t”. [Female, Clinical officer, non-IDU]
Demographic Characteristics | Clinical Officer (N=3) |
Medical Doctor (N=11) |
Lab Technologist (N=7) |
Nurse (N=18) |
Pharmaceutical Technologist (N=5) |
Other1 (N=16) |
Total (N=60) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Age | |||||||
Mean (SD) | 38.0 (2.65) | 35.5 (8.74) | 38.7 (6.10) | 41.4 (11.1) | 40.0 (6.36) | 35.1 (7.97) | 38.1 (8.88) |
Median [Min, Max] | 39.0 [35.0, 40.0] | 35.0 [27.0, 58.0] | 38.0 [32.0, 48.0] | 45.0 [20.0, 58.0] | 38.0 [32.0, 47.0] | 32.0 [26.0, 53.0] | 37.0 [20.0, 58.0] |
Sex | |||||||
Female | 2 (66.7%) | 8 (72.7%) | 4 (57.1%) | 12 (66.7%) | 2 (40.0%) | 6 (37.5%) | 34 (56.7%) |
Male | 1 (33.3%) | 3 (27.3%) | 3 (42.9%) | 6 (33.3%) | 3 (60.0%) | 10 (62.5%) | 26 (43.3%) |
Income | |||||||
≤ 50,000 | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (11.1%) | 0 (0%) | 4 (25.0%) | 6 (10.0%) |
50,000- 200,000 | 3 (100%) | 5 (45.5%) | 7 (100%) | 14 (77.8%) | 5 (100%) | 12 (75.0%) | 46 (76.7%) |
≥200,000 | 0 (0%) | 6 (54.5%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (11.1%) | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 8 (13.3%) |
Contact with COVID-19 positive patient | |||||||
Yes | 3 (100%) | 10 (90.9%) | 6 (85.7%) | 17 (94.4%) | 5 (100%) | 13 (81.3%) | 54 (90.0%) |
No | 0 (0%) | 1 (9.1%) | 1 (14.3%) | 1 (5.6%) | 0 (0%) | 3 (18.7%) | 6 (10.0%) |
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
Submitted:
13 December 2023
Posted:
14 December 2023
You are already at the latest version
This version is not peer-reviewed
Preprints on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2
Submitted:
13 December 2023
Posted:
14 December 2023
You are already at the latest version
“Yeah, it is more stressful because there is a lot of pressure at work especially you get that big people[government officials]have their patients in the ward, they keep on pushing and making sure that they get services not within the timelines that are set in the guidelines they want to get their results within an hour or even 30 minutes...So sometimes there is so much stress because there is too much pressure from the ministry and from within the hospital. You feel like you want to resign from work. The motivation of working is not there”. [Female, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“So, the mental anguish, I think, has been there. So, there has been an element from a patient perspective, delay in care…acute cases, denial of care delay in elective services to just overcrowding, limited staff, to the staffing in terms of the burnouts, being just extremely on the edge because of the COVID itself and then… it exposed the healthcare workers, to the mental anguish of being suspicious of having contracted the disease and finally having to confirm that you got the COVID-19. So, it’s been a roller coaster”. [Male, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“I had a feeling that I was being sent there to die since I didn’t have information and that fear and now you are sent to IDU where positive patients are and there was stigma around. We were working at night and we went to take tea there at night and when we left there, the colleagues boiled our cups. So, you see that kind of treatment just because someone is dealing with COVID, they want to treat differently. So, there was that stress, we were being stressed because of being treated differently”. [Male, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“Another thing is that the other colleagues in the main hospital still view us as people who have COVID, when they see us go to the main hospital that stigmatization part of it is still here. So, it’s really taking a toll on us. There is an increased level of mental stress compared to pre-COVID”.[Male, Nurse, IDU]
“Before COVID my levels were like 8. Right now, my levels are like two, because there were so many patients. I checked all the patients, I checked all the files, work was a lot, work was tasking, but now life is good, how many patients do I have? I have 13 patients; I have 4 patients in the pediatric ICU and 9 patients in the burn unit. Honestly, my stress levels have reduced to two at most”. [Female, Nutritionist, IDU]
“I was extremely worried about contracting COVID and the information out there was that when you contract COVID, you die. Some people saying ‘You will get sterilized’ and others were saying, your lifespan will reduce, if you recover, your lifespan will reduce, you see those misconceptions, it will reduce by ten years; so, I was worried”. [Male, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“Anxiety comes in terms of, what does tomorrow hold? What happens if I get COVID-19? What will happen to my children? What will happen to my spouse? What will my neighbor say if I tested positive and then my children are interacting with their children and then they will say it is you who is the source, the primary source of this COVID thing”. [Male, Clinical officer, non-IDU]
“I know I have had problems sleeping, lately I have had a lot of insomnia. So, for the last year, I have been taking a lot of sleep medication just to sleep. I find myself so tired when I wake up. I used to be an 8 o’clock person to work. Nowadays I think I am at work at 9 and 9:30. I feel lethargic and tired, how do I say it…no morale very, very... low morale”. [Female, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“You know there is a time when you don’t feel like talking to people, you don’t have an appetite…yeah those are the feelings that I have had in the past”. [Male, Pharmaceutical technologist, IDU]
“A lot there is so much demand for patient care there and also just anxious especially when we don’t have…sometimes we don’t have the right PPE and we still want patient care to be taken care of… So, we carry a lot of fatigue and anxiety when we are doing calls, especially with the crisis of not having PPEs sometimes or with the oxygen outrages”. [Female, Nurse, IDU]
“Of course, I am not mentally stable, that is what I can say, because having mental health illness doesn’t have to be symptomatic but of course that worries me…we have lost close colleagues out of it so it has affected my usual stability because now I’m living in fear. If I lose my colleagues I go into panic. If I lose my seniors I go into a panic, so I have been quite unstable for this period that we have been having COVID”. [Female, Clinical officer, IDU]
“Before we used to mix freely amongst ourselves, we used to share but now you find that if that social life is not there, you cannot sit with colleagues to give a story, to talk about your weekend experience and stuff like that… you may have something that you need to tell someone, not on phone but one on one so you are like now am going to sit with her and I don’t know where she was… let me just keep to myself and it is still eating you inside”. [Female, Nurse, non-IDU]
“Being broke can give you hypertension if you try it. Depression and hypertension because as I told you we used to work in locum, so that was very stressful we have that financial aspect so despite the tax reduction that the government gave us, there is nothing much we can do in terms of effect. Secondly, now the risk that you have because of work, for work that you are not being paid for. So, to me, it was quite stressful”. [Female, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“Okay in our section we have counselors with us, and when we are discussing especially on COVID experiences they help take care of stress, so if you feel you need them, they are readily available”. [Female, Laboratory technologist, IDU]
“So, I am getting support from my colleagues and also my family members, they also pray for me and the church members, they always communicate to me… Yeah, those are the people who have given me the strength to move on”. [Female, Nurse, non-IDU]
“In Kenyatta, they don’t have any support, my dear, what support do they have? They don’t have any support. Actually, the colleague that I told you about has been battling mental health for close to 15 years. The support offered was after making a plea to the chairman, a very nice gentleman. But for us, at Kenyatta, no one is interested in your mental health. In fact, as a resident, I have to pay consultation fees, and for everything else, I have to join the queue”. [Female, Medical doctor, non-IDU]
“So, the patients, the psychological support has been resourceful but for the healthcare workers, I don’t know where it fits, I can’t say because if you ask me, ‘Do you need a counselor?’ I will tell you maybe I don’t need a counselor”. [Male, Nutritionist, IDU]
“Probably not, and especially departments or units where there is no psychological support, let me put myself in a department which doesn’t have the psychological support, the discussions that we normally have, so you could find that people could go into complete depression, others could not even be able to report to work. So, I would say the measures were not adequate. Yeah”. [Male, Laboratory technologist, non-IDU]
“Offered I think yes, but taken up I think no. Yeah, if they have you can always go but ah! [sigh] I always do not go, let me handle myself in my way…how do you go to people who know you? Okay as much as they are supporting us, we are still colleagues…I cannot come to you and then meet you in the corridor the following day, I will be uncomfortable. So, as much as it has been offered, taking it up is just a challenge.” [Female, Social worker, non-IDU]
“Mental health comes from our perception of the environment we live in. So, let us address the basics before we go to mental health. There are scientific theoretical models for example the social determinants of mental health, so if you take care of someone’s physiological needs, like security, food, to have good medical care those are things that will take care of the mental health status. Let us address the basics, and then you will end up addressing the mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, fears, and unhealthy behaviors of health care providers”.[Male, Nurse, non-IDU].
“Okay within our set up even with or without COVID, there should be a way of debriefing our issues, we should have a psychotherapy kind of a thing, a counseling in our unit, not necessarily doors but they could be coming in weekly, for some kind of group therapy…okay some conditions are very traumatizing, like you may get a very helpless situation where you can’t help the patient and with that, you carry it in your heart for several days even years, it increases your fear in life, you put it like “what if it was me?”, We may have a debriefing once in a while but we don’t have such kinds of initiatives in our department. We don’t”. [Female, Clinical officer, non-IDU]
Demographic Characteristics | Clinical Officer (N=3) |
Medical Doctor (N=11) |
Lab Technologist (N=7) |
Nurse (N=18) |
Pharmaceutical Technologist (N=5) |
Other1 (N=16) |
Total (N=60) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Age | |||||||
Mean (SD) | 38.0 (2.65) | 35.5 (8.74) | 38.7 (6.10) | 41.4 (11.1) | 40.0 (6.36) | 35.1 (7.97) | 38.1 (8.88) |
Median [Min, Max] | 39.0 [35.0, 40.0] | 35.0 [27.0, 58.0] | 38.0 [32.0, 48.0] | 45.0 [20.0, 58.0] | 38.0 [32.0, 47.0] | 32.0 [26.0, 53.0] | 37.0 [20.0, 58.0] |
Sex | |||||||
Female | 2 (66.7%) | 8 (72.7%) | 4 (57.1%) | 12 (66.7%) | 2 (40.0%) | 6 (37.5%) | 34 (56.7%) |
Male | 1 (33.3%) | 3 (27.3%) | 3 (42.9%) | 6 (33.3%) | 3 (60.0%) | 10 (62.5%) | 26 (43.3%) |
Income | |||||||
≤ 50,000 | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (11.1%) | 0 (0%) | 4 (25.0%) | 6 (10.0%) |
50,000- 200,000 | 3 (100%) | 5 (45.5%) | 7 (100%) | 14 (77.8%) | 5 (100%) | 12 (75.0%) | 46 (76.7%) |
≥200,000 | 0 (0%) | 6 (54.5%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (11.1%) | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 8 (13.3%) |
Contact with COVID-19 positive patient | |||||||
Yes | 3 (100%) | 10 (90.9%) | 6 (85.7%) | 17 (94.4%) | 5 (100%) | 13 (81.3%) | 54 (90.0%) |
No | 0 (0%) | 1 (9.1%) | 1 (14.3%) | 1 (5.6%) | 0 (0%) | 3 (18.7%) | 6 (10.0%) |
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
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