HUNTSVILLE, Ala — If you're tired of the pandemic and ready for it to be over, imagine just how much more exhausted you’d feel if you were a health care worker over the past 10 months.
According to studies found in the ‘Wiley’ and ‘Wolters Kluwer’ Public Health Emergency Journals, the pandemic has brought a surge in new cases of depression and anxiety among health care workers.
Nurses working in the ICU or COVID-19 units can start to have severe emotional distress, "compassion fatigue", and burnout.
We spoke to a Charge Nurse at Huntsville Hospital who says talking about things, helps her unit. We met virtually with Regina Andrews, a Charge Nurse of Unit 6MST at Huntsville Hospital: “Nurses have to talk about it. One day, our whole unit was in tears. We had lost 3 patients in one day and we were all bawling. Here comes upper management saying ‘What can we do?’ and ‘Do you need someone to talk to?”
Andrews says and the nurses in 6MST have been having daily meetings to check in on one another.