Experiences of Health Workers in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Experiences of Health Workers in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author: Marie Bismark

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-02-21

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1000537595

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Experiences of Health Workers in the COVID-19 Pandemic shares the stories of frontline health workers—told in their own words—during the second wave of COVID-19 in Australia. The book records the complex emotions healthcare workers experienced as the pandemic unfolded, and the challenges they faced in caring for themselves, their families, and their patients. The book shares their insights on what we can learn from the pandemic to strengthen our health system and prepare for future crises. The book draws on over 9,000 responses to a survey examining the psychological, occupational, and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on frontline health workers. Survey participants came from all areas of the health sector, from intensive care doctors to hospital cleaners to aged care nurses, and from large metropolitan hospitals to rural primary care practices. The authors organise these free-text responses thematically, creating a shared narrative of health workers experiences. Each chapter is prefaced by a brief commentary that provides context and introduces the the themes that emerged from the survey. This book offers a unique historical record of the experiences of thousands of healthcare workers at the height of the second wave of the pandemic and will be of great interest to anyone interested in the experiences of healthcare workers, and the psychological, organisational, healthcare policy, and social challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.


The COVID-19 Crisis

The COVID-19 Crisis

Author: Deborah Lupton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-19

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1000375919

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Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has affected every part of the world. Well beyond its health effects, the pandemic has wrought major changes in people’s everyday lives as they confront restrictions imposed by physical distancing and consequences such as loss of work, working or learning from home and reduced contact with family and friends. This edited collection covers a diverse range of experiences, practices and representations across international contexts and cultures (UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand). Together, these contributions offer a rich account of COVID society. They provide snapshots of what life was like for people in a variety of situations and locations living through the first months of the novel coronavirus crisis, including discussion not only of health-related experiences but also the impact on family, work, social life and leisure activities. The socio-material dimensions of quotidian practices are highlighted: death rituals, dating apps, online musical performances, fitness and exercise practices, the role of windows, healthcare work, parenting children learning at home, moving in public space as a blind person and many more diverse topics are explored. In doing so, the authors surface the feelings of strangeness and challenges to norms of practice that were part of many people’s experiences, highlighting the profound affective responses that accompanied the disruption to usual cultural forms of sociality and ritual in the wake of the COVID outbreak and restrictions on movement. The authors show how social relationships and social institutions were suspended, re-invented or transformed while social differences were brought to the fore. At the macro level, the book includes localised and comparative analyses of political, health system and policy responses to the pandemic, and highlights the differences in representations and experiences of very different social groups, including people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, Dutch Muslim parents, healthcare workers in France and Australia, young adults living in northern Italy, performing artists and their audiences, exercisers in Australia and New Zealand, the Latin cultures of Spain and Italy, Asian-Americans and older people in Australia. This volume will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates in sociology, cultural and media studies, medical humanities, anthropology, political science and cultural geography.


Comfort Theory and Practice

Comfort Theory and Practice

Author: Katharine Kolcaba

Publisher: Springer Publishing Company

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780826116338

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I am most excited and impressed with the scope and focus of this work. As I began to read it, I had trouble putting it down. It is highly readable, engaging, all-inclusive, and most informative. Jean Watson, RN, PhD, HNC, FAAN I am honored and delighted to recommend this text for all nurses who cared for and care about patients. from the Foreword by May Wykle, RN, PhD, FAAN This book places comfort at the forefront of nursing care, by presenting a carefully researched theory of comfort that nurses can use as a framework for practice. Engagingly written, the book combines a first-person account of the development of the theory with supporting research, and practical information for its application. Kolcaba analyzes the concept of comfort; describes its physical, psychospiritual, environmental and sociocultural components; evaluates its meaning in the many different contexts in which health care occurs; and describes how it can be measured. The appendix includes comfort care questionnaires that can be used with patients in many settings, and a comfort scale that can be used with patients for a quick assessment of comfort. Clinicians, researchers, educators, and students will find this holistic approach helpful in setting priorities and parameters for patient care.


The Rise of the Frontline Workers

The Rise of the Frontline Workers

Author: Cristian Grossmann

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12-22

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13:

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2.7 billion of the world's workforce are frontline workers - this book explains how business leaders can transform their organization by making frontline workers more effective, efficient, motivated, and happier in their work."An essential business book for senior management in retail, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, or indeed any industry that employs large numbers of frontline workers." Given that 80% of the world's workforce is employed on the frontline, why have organizations not invested in the mobile tools that will make those workers more effective, efficient, motivated, and happier in their work? Desk-based workers have been provided with such tools, why not their frontline counterparts?These are the questions that Cristian Grossmann addresses in his new book, The Rise of the Frontline Workers, in which he outlines why it is so important for businesses to digitalize their frontline workforce and explains how organizations should best approach doing so.Cristian is a tech entrepreneur whose company Beekeeper has raised more than $80M in funding and supplies its employee communications app to some of the world's biggest and best-known organizations, including London Heathrow Airport, Domino's Pizza, and Hilton Hotels. Cristian, a former frontline worker himself, has an extensive understanding of what technology is required to make the frontline workforce more effective and describes why frontline workers need tools and solutions that are designed specifically for them, not a patched-up version of something that works for desk-based workers.The Rise of the Frontline Workers explores how frontline workers are essential to the smooth running of society. The events of 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic have proved that beyond any doubt. Yet for many employers, frontline workers and their needs are overlooked, time and time again. During the various lockdowns of 2020, frontline workers rarely had the option of working from home and continued to work on the frontline, often at personal risk to themselves due to a lack of PPE.This ignoring of frontline worker needs is not new and dates back centuries. But things are changing. Covid-19 has accelerated trends that had been building for years. People were already using smartphones in massive numbers and reaching frontline workers via their smartphones has become a mission-critical objective for many organizations. The on-going rise of mobile technology and changing perceptions of how frontline workers are valued have combined to create a perfect storm in which the needs of the frontline workforce are finally being addressed. Providing frontline workers with the tools to communicate with, to give them access to the information that will keep them safe at work, and to ensure they feel valued has become one of the biggest priorities for businesses now.By the end of The Rise of the Frontline Workesr, you will have gained a greater understanding of the perfect storm that has gathered to make digitalization of frontline workers so important, learn from companies that have already done so, and be ready to start your own frontline worker digitalization projects. Organizations that take the needs of 80% of their workforce seriously by providing them with the right digital tools for the job will survive and indeed thrive in the future. Those that continue to ignore the needs of the frontline workforce will head in the opposite direction. This book makes it clear why you should choose the former option.


Care in Practice

Care in Practice

Author: Annemarie Mol

Publisher: transcript Verlag

Published: 2015-02-28

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 3839414474

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In what way is »care« a matter of »tinkering«? Rather than presenting care as a (preferably »warm«) relation between human beings, the various contributions to the volume give the material world (usually cast as »cold«) a prominent place in their analysis. Thus, this book does not continue to oppose care and technology, but contributes to rethinking both in such a way that they can be analysed together. Technology is not cast as a functional tool, easy to control - it is shifting, changing, surprising and adaptable. In care practices all »things« are (and have to be) tinkered with persistently. Knowledge is fluid, too. Rather than a set of general rules, the knowledges (in the plural) relevant to care practices are as adaptable and in need of adaptation as the technologies, the bodies, the people, and the daily lives involved.


A New Era in Global Health

A New Era in Global Health

Author: William Rosa, MS, RN, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, FCCM, Caritas Coach

Publisher: Springer Publishing Company

Published: 2017-06-26

Total Pages: 621

ISBN-13: 082619012X

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Explores the great potential for nursing involvement in promoting global health. This unique text elucidates the relationship between global nursing and global health, underscoring the significance of nurses’ contributions in furthering the Post-2015 Agenda of the United Nations regarding global health infrastructures, and examining myriad opportunities for nurses to promote the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and foster health and healthy environments worldwide. While past nursing literature has emphasized nursing’s potential involvement and influence in the global arena, this is the first book to identify, validate, and promote nurses’ proactive and multidimensional work in furthering current transnational goals for advancing health on a global scale. The book includes an introduction to global health, clarification of terms and roles, perspectives on education, research, and theory related to global nursing, a history of the partnership between the United Nations and the nursing profession, an in-depth exploration of the 17 SDGs and relevant nursing tasks, as well as several chapters on creating a vision for 2030 and beyond. It is based on recent and emerging developments in the transnational nursing community, and establishes, through the writings of esteemed global health and nursing scholars, a holistic dialogue about opportunities for nurses to expand their roles as change agents and leaders in the cross-cultural and global context. The personal reflections of contributors animate such topics as global health ethics, the role of caring in a sustainable world, creating a shared humanity, cultural humility, and many others. Key Features: Examines, for the first time, nursing’s role in each of the 17 SDGs Integrates international initiatives delineating nursing’s role in the future of global health Creates opportunities for nurses to redefine their contributions to global health Includes personal reflections to broaden perspectives and invite transnational approaches to professional development Distills short, practical, and evidence-based chapters describing global opportunities for nurses in practice, education, and research


Moral Resilience

Moral Resilience

Author: Cynda Hylton Rushton

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0190619295

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Suffering is an unavoidable reality in health care. Not only are patients and families suffering but also the clinicians who care for them. Commonly the suffering experienced by clinicians is moral in nature, in part a reflection of the increasing complexity of health care, their roles within it, and the expanding range of available interventions. Moral suffering is the anguish that occurs when the burdens of treatment appear to outweigh the benefits; scarce human and material resources must be allocated; informed consent is incomplete or inadequate; or there are disagreements about goals of treatment among patients, families or clinicians. Each is a source of moral adversity that challenges clinicians' integrity: the inner harmony that arises when their essential values and commitments are aligned with their choices and actions. If moral suffering is unrelieved it can lead to disengagement, burnout, and undermine the quality of clinical care. The most studied response to moral adversity is moral distress. The sources and sequelae of moral distress, one type of moral suffering, have been documented among clinicians across specialties. It is vital to shift the focus to solutions and to expanded individual and system strategies that mitigate the detrimental effects of moral suffering. Moral resilience, the capacity of an individual to restore or sustain integrity in response to moral adversity, offers a path forward. It encompasses capacities aimed at developing self-regulation and self-awareness, buoyancy, moral efficacy, self-stewardship and ultimately personal and relational integrity. Clinicians and healthcare organizations must work together to transform moral suffering by cultivating the individual capacities for moral resilience and designing a new architecture to support ethical practice. Used worldwide for scalable and sustainable change, the Conscious Full Spectrum approach, offers a method to solve problems to support integrity, shift patterns that undermine moral resilience and ethical practice, and source the inner potential of clinicians and leaders to produce meaningful and sustainable results that benefit all.


COVID-19 Frontliners

COVID-19 Frontliners

Author: Dan Gustafson

Publisher:

Published: 2020-06-30

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13:

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This book holds the stories of nine nurses from across the United States, who volunteered to work in New York City hospitals during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. These nurses left their ordinary lives behind to fly on empty planes to a city overwhelmed by a plague. Thrust onto the coronavirus wards, they saw and did incredible things. Faced with adversity they put patients' lives before their own, working tirelessly day after day in unimaginable conditions. These first-hand accounts provide a powerful look at what it was really like on the front lines of health care during a global pandemic. The stories these nurses have are crucial to share with the world. This should never happen again.


Mental Health Effects of COVID-19

Mental Health Effects of COVID-19

Author: Ahmed Moustafa

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2021-06-11

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0128242884

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The physical effects of COVID-19 are felt globally. However, one issue that has not been sufficiently addressed is the impact of COVID-19 on mental health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, citizens worldwide are enduring widespread lockdowns; children are out of school; and millions have lost their jobs, which has caused anxiety, depression, insomnia, and distress. Mental Health Effects of COVID-19 provides a comprehensive analysis of mental health problems resulting from COVID-19, including depression, suicidal thoughts and attempts, trauma, and PTSD. The book includes chapters detailing the impact of COVID-19 on the family's well-being and society dynamics. The book concludes with an explanation on how meditation and online treatment methods can be used to combat the effects on mental health. - Discusses family dynamics, domestic violence, and aggression due to COVID-19 - Details the psychological impact of COVID-19 on children and adolescents - Includes key information on depression, anxiety, and suicide as a result of COVID-19