Caring for Caregivers: Recognizing and Reducing Suicide Risk in Healthcare Workers
Written by Marquita Anderson, RN Consultant
COVID positivity rates may be on the decline, but the incessant stress, anxiety and social disengagement health care workers took on during the pandemic persists. 2020 brought more than the first global pandemic we’ve seen in almost 100 years; it brought expectations that tested the limits of our healthcare system and the workers at it’s foundation.
As hospitals around the country started filling up, healthcare workers became the first line of defense against the growing shadow that COVID cast over the United States. While corporations were sending their employees home and shutting down their office buildings, healthcare staff were taking longer shifts and fewer breaks. Many slept in their hospitals and went weeks without seeing their families, even as the flow of PPE dried up and the number of patients became overwhelming.
For months, healthcare workers stepped into a war they didn’t sign up to fight.
Let’s take a moment to reflect on how COVID has changed the face of healthcare and what we can do to support our community of caregivers going forward.
More Expensive Than We Can Afford
While we watch society emerge from two years of darkness and confusion, we can’t forget that many healthcare workers are still feeling the long-term consequences of an event that ravaged their mental fortitude, their industry, and their community.
According to Mental Health America, which conducted a survey of health care workers’ mental health between June-September 2020, 82% of healthcare workers reported feeling emotionally exhausted during the pandemic and more than half of nurses did not feel like they were receiving enough emotional support. 93% of healthcare workers said they felt stressed and 63% experienced work-related dread. Furthermore, physicians and nurses are two-to-three-times more likely to complete suicide than the general population.
As a result, a study conducted by Elsevier Health found that 47% of U.S. healthcare workers plan to leave their current role within the next two to three years.
The cost of our healthcare workers’ mental health is too expensive for us, as a society, to bear. We can’t continue to ask healthcare workers to continue to sacrifice themselves for an indeterminate amount of time without offering the support they need to fully rest and recover.
What Can Healthcare Workers, Hospitals and Others Do to Protect Themselves?
Change happens one step at a time. Whether you are a nurse, LPN, doctor, DON or another healthcare worker, there are steps you can take to protect yourself and set your colleagues up for success.
If you are a hospital, nursing home or residential care facility:
Staff appropriately: Leaning on just a few individuals leaves you, and your patients, vulnerable if just one person steps away for the day or gets sick. Instead of staffing the minimum number of people for your facility to run, hire enough people to handle the workload successfully, even if one or two aren’t able to work. Healthcare workers should be able to feel like they can take the day off if needed without it impacting their patients.
Invest in training for your staff: For the most part, people will meet expectations that are set for them if those expectations are attainable and understood. Set your staff up for success by investing in training materials and providing them enough time to not only learn their jobs, but to gain confidence in their roles.
Advocate for your staff: If you are a manager, DON, or someone else in a leadership role, part of your job is to advocate for those who work for you so they get the resources they need to do their job successfully. Work with them so they can feel empowered to be their best at work and you will see lower turnover, happier staff and as a result, better patient care.
If you are a nurse, doctor, LPN or other healthcare worker who works directly with patients:
Advocate for yourself: Take your vacation time, talk to your coworkers and be a champion for what you need. You are the only one who knows what’s best for you.
Stop “shoulding” on yourself: When you need a break, take it. Don’t let guilt make you feel like you should be cleaning the house, cooking, working out, or doing something else productive. The last two and a half years have tested the mental and physical fortitude of every caregiver. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself instead of increasing your stress by thinking about everything you “should” be doing.
Take care of yourself: To the best of your ability, make time to get enough sleep, eat well, and try to exercise; even if that means going for a 20-minute walk at the end of the day.
Accept help: There are many reasons people turn down therapy, medication or other forms of emotional support. But if you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation or other forms of psychological distress, it’s okay to get help. You can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 and the Disaster Distress Helpline at 1-800-985-5990. If you prefer to text, you can text “HOME” to 741741. There are also training courses titled “Care for the Caregiver” that you and your colleagues can complete to learn how to better take care of yourself while serving others.
Healthcare workers often forget to take care of themselves or fear seeking mental health treatment because they don’t want to be perceived as incompetent or unfit to care for others. But after years of giving your heart, soul and body to the care of your patients, you owe it to yourself and your family to get the help you need.
The COVID pandemic may have brought new and overwhelming challenges to healthcare workers throughout the country, but those same caregivers have repeatedly proven themselves to be some of the strongest individuals in the world. Now, as the pandemic is entering a new era, is the time to advocate for your recovery and forge a new path in the world of healthcare. Together, we can do anything.