BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – The incessant increase in COVID-19 infections in Spain after the holiday season is once again hitting hospitals, threatening the mental health of doctors and nurses who have been at the forefront of the pandemic for almost a year.
In Barcelona’s hospital del Mar, the critical care capacity has more than doubled and is almost full, with 80% of the ICU beds occupied by coronavirus patients.
“There are young people of 20-year-olds and older people of 80-year-olds, all age groups,” said dr. Joan Ramon Masclans, who heads the ICU, said. “It’s very difficult, and it’s one patient after another.”
Although authorities were able to attend up to 10 people for Christmas and New Year celebrations, Masclans chose not to join his family and spent the holidays at home with his partner.
“We did it to preserve our health and the health of others. And if you see it being done (by others not), it causes considerable anger, which contributes to fatigue, ” he said.
A study released this month by Hospital del Mar, which studies the impact of spring’s COVID-19 surge on more than 9,000 health workers in Spain, found that at least 28% had major depression. Jordi Alonso, one of the lead researchers, says it is six times higher than in the general population before the pandemic.
In addition, the study found that nearly half of the participants were at high risk for anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, or drug and alcohol abuse problems.
Spanish health workers are far from the only ones who have suffered psychologically from the pandemic. In China, the levels of mental disorders among doctors and nurses were even higher, with 50% reporting depression, 45% having anxiety and 34% reporting insomnia, according to the World Health Organization.
In the UK, a survey released by the Royal College of Physicians last week found that 64% of the doctors were tired or exhausted. One in four supported mental health.
“It’s pretty awful in the world of medicine at the moment,” said Dr. Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in a statement accompanying the study. “Hospital admissions are at the highest level ever, staff are exhausted, and although there is light at the end of the tunnel, the light seems far away.”
Dr Aleix Carmona, a third-year anesthesiologist living in the northeastern region of Catalonia, did not have much ICU experience before the pandemic hit. But when operations were canceled, Carmona was called to the ICU at Moisès Broggi Hospital outside Barcelona to fight a virus of which the world knew very little.
“In the beginning, we had a lot of adrenaline. We were very scared, but we had a lot of energy, ‘Carmona recalls. He plowed through the first weeks of the pandemic without having much time to process the unprecedented struggle that was going on.
Only after the second month did he begin to feel the toll to see firsthand how people slowly die as they exhale. He thought about what he needed to tell patients before intubating them. His initial reaction was always to reassure them and tell them it would be okay. But in some cases, he knew that was not true.
“I had trouble sleeping and a feeling of anxiety before every shift,” Carmona said. He added that he would return home after 12 hours and feel as if he had been beaten.
For a while, he could only sleep using medication. Some colleagues started using antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. What really helped Carmona, however, was a support group in his hospital, where his staff downloaded the experiences they had bottled up.
But not everyone joined the group. For many people, asking for help would be unsuitable for the job.
“In our profession we can handle a lot,” said David Oliver, a spokesman for the SATSE association’s chapter in Catalonia. “We do not want to take time because we know we will increase the workload of our colleagues.”
According to the study, the group of health workers most affected were nurses and nurses, who are overwhelmingly women and often immigrants. They spent more time with dying COVID-19 patients, faced poor working conditions and salaries, and were afraid of infecting family members.
Desirée Ruiz is the supervisor of the nurse in the critical care department at Hospital del Mar. Some nurses in her team asked to take time off from work, without the constant stress and all the deaths.
To prevent infections, patients are rarely allowed to make family visits, which contributes to their dependence on nurses. Ruiz especially said to deliver the last wishes or words of a patient to family members over the phone.
“It’s very difficult for … people who hold the hand of these patients even though they know they will eventually die,” she said.
Ruiz, who organizes the shifts of nurses and makes sure the ICU is always adequately staffed, finds it harder and harder to do so.
Unlike in the summer, when the number of cases fell and health workers were encouraged to go on holiday, doctors and nurses have been working non-stop since the autumn, when virus cases picked up again.
The latest revival has nearly doubled the number of daily cases seen in November, and Spain 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 neighboring Portugal, the Spanish health minister has for now ruled out the possibility of a new exclusion.and rather rely on less drastic restrictions that are not as damaging to the economy, but that take longer to lower the infection rate.
Alonso fears that the latest increase in virus patients could be just as damaging to the mental health of medical staff as the shock of the first months of the pandemic.
“If we want to be adequately cared for, we must also take care of the health workers who have suffered and are still suffering,” he said.
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