Forgotten Heroes

Abstract

Objectives: Health care support workers have been facing several challenges due to the stressful environment in COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the gap in literature, it is mandatory to explore their experiences to identify burnout, predisposing factors, and possible interventions. Methods: We conducted qualitative research with a hermeneutic phenomenological method. Participants belonged to cleaning services, security, and hospital administration areas at a hospital in Bogotá. We used semistructured individual interviews. The analysis approaches were deductive and inductive. Results: As main concepts, we found the following: fear of infection and coping mechanisms, dealing with COVID-19 and being part of the health care support system, overwhelming workload and motivation to keep going and socioeconomic conditions. Conclusions: We found burnout predisposing factors; however, the participants did not express symptoms of burnout syndrome. We believe protective factors such as resilience are influential concerning this outcome.

Síndrome de Burnout y su Relación con el Entorno Familiar del Personal de Salud. Centro de Salud Santa Ana-24h, Manabí

“…Esta situación, junto con factores individuales como la supresión de sentimientos, dificultades para decir "no" ante la demanda excesiva de pacientes, sentirse irresponsables e inútiles, baja autoestima y dificultad para expresar problemas personales, puede llevar a los trabajadores de la salud a desarrollar sensaciones de incompetencia, inseguridad, fracaso y temor. Además, la estigmatización de la sociedad, el requerimiento estricto de equipos de bioseguridad y la incomodidad de este (Clemente-Suárez et al, 2021;Valera-Hernández et al, 2022), la escasez de insumos necesarios, entre otros factores, incrementan la incidencia del síndrome de Burnout (West et al, 2018).…”