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Psychological First-Aid Experiences of Disaster Health Care Workers: A Qualitative Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2019

Yun-Jung Choi Open the ORCID record for Yun-Jung Choi [Opens in a new window]
Yun-Jung Choi*
Affiliation:
Red Cross College of Nursing, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Dr Yun-Jung Choi, Red Cross College of Nursing, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, 06974, South Korea (e-mail: yunjungchoi@cau.ac.kr).
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Abstract

Objective:

Disaster health care workers experience much greater stress providing psychological first-aid and suffer from the indirect experience of traumatic events. This study examines how disaster health care workers experience disaster mental health.

Methods:

Twenty-one disaster health care workers recruited from fire stations, community mental health service centers, and disaster trauma centers in Korea participated in this study. Data were collected via in-depth interviews and qualitatively analyzed according to Colaizzi’s phenomenological approach.

Results:

Disaster health care workers’ experiences of disaster mental health can be analyzed according to 4 theme categories: (1) commitment to one’s duty as a disaster health care worker; (2) powerlessness and lack of confidence; (3) incident shock and burnout; and (4) incomplete and inadequate healing.

Conclusions:

In order to prevent mental health problems and support the disaster health care workers, it is necessary to develop and provide effective, nationwide psychological first-aid training, as well as disaster trauma recovery programs that are tailored to Korean sociocultural context and use immersive digital health care/education technology.

Keywords

disasterdisaster health care workersmental healthpsychological first-aidqualitative research
Type
Brief Report
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , August 2020 , pp. 433 - 436
Copyright
© 2019 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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References

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