Researchers from ULL analyze the emotional costs for healthcare professionals
Researchers from the group HuMindLab: Laboratory of Social Cognition from the University of la Laguna have published a study in the journal Human Resources for Health in which they explore the role of mental states and the empathy in the medical context, using an approach multi-method. The purpose is the development of strategies that will help the professionals, institutions, and society to manage the costs emotional health professions.
The pandemic of Covid-19 has accentuated the need to address the emotional well-being and the problems related with the stress in health professionals. Among the more severe problems is the burnout syndrome or burnt, but also other phenomena, such as the moral suffering or the loss of confidence in the sense of one’s own work. This scenario increases the intention of leaving the profession, with the impact on a personal and social that it entails, they explain.
The proposal is to point out how a social discourse of admiration and praise towards the healthcare staff may, paradoxically, to trigger a general indifference towards the strenuous in their day-to-day. This reality was well reflected during the pandemic. While the public discourse held the idea of fight-or-heroism, the efforts to strengthen the physical and human resources were clearly insufficient. “We call attention to the idea that this characterization extremely positive health staff, as superheroes have as a counterpart to several adverse consequences,” said the experts.
First, they point out, the image of superhero implies a different form of dehumanization. “Even when it is based on the admiration, the sobrehumanización has negative effects, reducing the perception of these people as human beings capable of experiencing discomfort and pain.” In the case of health care personnel, to attribute a super-human abilities involves the denial of other features as is the natural response to fatigue or the taking of decisions in extreme conditions, in which they must deal with the fear of disease and death, added the experts.
To assume a condition superhuman, the idea of vulnerability is outside of the definition of the role prototypical of the medical staff, and is socially misunderstood.
In this line, the objective of the research work is to evaluate and highlight the risks that are hidden behind the discourse of praise and noted the consequent necessity of recognizing the vulnerability.
“From our point of view, the actions to protect the well-being of the professionals have placed too much emphasis on the notion of resilience staff, placing the burden of the emotional distress of an individual basis”, explained.
By against, the intervention programs in the role that the companies themselves in the care of the welfare of its personnel are scarce.
When part of an image of the heroic, added the expert, the expression of one’s own vulnerability may involve a set of attitudes and responses to negative and culpabilizantes on the part of the system and of the organization, that can also transform negatively own vision that person has of themselves. “Through the process of socialization that occurs in organizations, professionals not only know the rejection that any sign of psychic discomfort causes his companions (stigma in advance), but they also deny the discomfort that they themselves feel (stigma internalized). Therefore, rather than seek help tend to hide it”.
“Sharing emotions requires a job-related cognitive meanings of this profession that helps to recover a sense of group identity and the professional”.
By this mechanism, the stigma is reinforced within a medical culture that enacts high expectations, emphasizing the belief that the autosuficienciael physical exhaustion and emotional are part of the professional identity. In contrast, attending to their own needs and self-management can be seen as selfishness, and help-seeking as a sign of weakness. The first challenge is to identify vulnerability as a human trait common, that allows to decouple the notion of mental illness. Normalize the vulnerability would allow valuing it as a source of personal enrichment and professional.
A second track is to change the focus from the individual to a social reality that is complex. In this way, the emotional stressors should be conceived as occupational hazards in the place of mental health problems. And a third abounds in allowing individuals or groups of individuals who experience suffering and exhaustion to express their own needs and provide them with social support and organizational.
“Sharing emotions requires a job-related cognitive meanings of this profession that helps to recover a sense of group identity and the professional,” said the researchers of the University of la Laguna. Finally, the challenge of expanding the framework of shared responsibility and the need of solutions of the system should be borne by the health organizations. “The lack of prevention and attention to the welfare of their staff is, ultimately, extremely expensive”, they conclude.
