Author: Dr Christa Maria Joel Module: Responding to Public Health Challenge Supervisor: Ms Helen Cockburn University of the West of Scotland

1. How has Covid 19 presented as a public health challenge within your area of practice and what has
been the impact of this?
Thank you, Helen, for posting this interesting question. In response to Gillian’s post, I
agree that COVID 19 is still a significant public health challenge and has had an
immense impact on the healthcare systems across the globe (Giusti et al., 2020).
In 2019, China saw its first case of coronavirus disease (Wang et al., 2020). By March
2020, there was already a rampant spread of the disease worldwide, and it was
declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020). Other than
the massive financial impact of the disease on the healthcare systems (Kaye et
al., 2021), I would like to concentrate on the psychological problems faced by the
frontline workers.
As a practising doctor, mental health
has been impacted during the COVID pandemic. There has been an unprecedented ris
e in anxiety, depression and stress (Ornell et al., 2020). Frontline workers are
burdened with a massive workload
feeling powerless. Their concern about their safety and their families, whether they will s
pread the infection to them from the hospital (Liu et al., 2020) is another
reason for psychological impact. The transformative role from a health worker to a patie
nt might lead to high levels of frustration and fear (Rana et
al., 2020). They are also exposed to exhausting long
work shifts to maintain the balance in healthcare systems, negatively affecting their
patients’ treatments. In addition,
their health conditions are affected by wearing personal protective gear, which aggravat
es their discomfort and breathing issues (Giusti et al., 2020). Health workers who are
not in the frontline
are also exposed to high levels of stress, have decreased accessibility to a psychologic
al evaluation, less

2. medical knowledge of the pandemic and inadequate training on the usage of personal p
rotective equipment (Tan et al., 2020).
Motivational factors like supportive family members/colleagues, nontoxic workplace and
adequate knowledge to treat the disease reduce the stress of the healthcare
workers and increase their morale. A particular intervention to tackle this stress is
implementing multidisciplinary teams and giving questionnaires to screen for
psychological issues (Mohindra et al., 2020).
But are these motivational factors and strategies enough to tackle the mental health of
the health care workers, or should the governments worldwide take initiatives
to implement some interventions or counselling sessions to support frontline
workers who are grappling with COVID 19 day and night?
REFERENCES FOR SUMMATIVE DISCUSSION 3
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4. World Health Organisation (2020). COVID-19 Public Health Emergency of International
Concern (PHEIC) Global research and innovation forum. Available from:
https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/covid-19-public-health-emergency-of-
international-concern-(pheic)-global-research-and-innovation-forum (Accessed
10/11/21).