Health workers overwhelmed by Covid-19 want help, not praise for being heroes

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nursing thumb medium90 93GroundUp reports that many health professionals are battling to cope emotionally with the surge in Covid-19 cases.  

“Emotionally, we are not coping. Seeing death at this rate every day is not normal,” said Mosima Mabeba, a nurse working in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a provincial hospital in Limpopo.  The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the hospital hard, she noted.  Of five patients on ventilators she cared for recently, only one survived.  Health professionals were already under pressure before the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Nokukhanya Khanyile, who works in the pediatric unit at a Johannesburg hospital, noted.  But now, health professionals have no choice but to keep on working because there are patients to care for.  The suspension of visiting hours has meant that staff have to support patients who are isolated from their families and deal with the families who are not allowed to view the body of a loved one who died.  Healthcare professionals need a channel to express their fatigue and to debrief, said Dr Precious Dohnodzo Chikura, who is completing her community service at a district hospital in Mpumalanga.  She has founded Frontline Refuge, an online platform where mental health professionals offer therapy sessions free of charge to colleagues.  She observed, however, that while the sentiment behind encouragements like “healthcare workers are heroes” was appreciated, it created a false impression that they did not buckle under the pressure or need support.  “There’s a danger in that hero label,” she said, adding that it put health workers in a position where they have to over-perform all the time. “Looking at healthcare workers as heroes neglects the government’s responsibility to provide danger pay, and time off after experiencing trauma,” she pointed out.


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