Health care providers face extreme work-related stressors responding to disasters and other potentially traumatic events. In witnessing a postdisaster aftermath, they are susceptible to secondary trauma, which can impact their own physical and mental health, stress, and burnout. As natural disasters increase in both frequency and lethality, it is critical to understand the factors impacting provider mental health and well-being. Given that these topics are understudied, in-depth qualitative analysis of a specific disaster provides an opportunity to closely examine how health care providers responding to a natural disaster experienced structural and organizational factors in their work environments that impacted their own mental health. Approximately 1 year following a lethal disaster crisis response, the current study interviewed 22 health care providers about their phenomenological experiences and the key factors that influenced their short- and long-term well-being. Data were analyzed thematically using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012). Results suggested that the participants experienced both short- and long-term mental health sequelae associated with responding to disasters. In addition, participants identified salient ways in which structural and systemic factors impacted their mental health, including their experiences of disaster response preparedness, postdisaster debriefing, peer support, organizational acknowledgment and public recognition practices for the contributions of health care providers, and workplace psychological support. Implications for future research focused on organizational strategies to address secondary traumatic stress and burnout and mental health services to support health care providers are discussed.
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