Supporting Staff during COVID

: an exploration in how we help health care workers and the impact on therapists

Abstract

The thesis consists of three chapters exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on staff wellbeing. The first chapter is a systematic review of mindfulness-based interventions for staff working in high intensity and emergency medical settings prior to COVID; it considers a variety of outcome measures (stress, burnout, mental health, physical health, performance, and mindfulness). Findings indicated that mindfulness-based interventions were effective in reducing stress, improving mental health and measures of performance; however, there was no reported impact on burnout, and mixed results for physical health outcomes. Whilst mindfulness-based interventions appear to have an effect on some outcomes, the quality of studies identified was poor, limiting the conclusions that could be drawn from the data.
The second chapter presents an exploration of the experiences for psychologists and therapists working in a staff wellbeing and support service during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to interpret the data gathered from semi-structured interviews, which found three superordinate themes: ‘Waiting for the wave to hit’ encompassed the apprehension participants felt joining the service, ‘The best and worst of us’ was comprised of participants’ reflections on working with front line staff, who often presented as being mistreated in their work, and finally ‘Who am I after this?’ in which participants sought to derive meaning from their experiences.
The third chapter examines the relevant clinical and theoretical implications of the previous two chapters; in addition, there is reflection from the author on their experiences undertaking the thesis.

Date of Award	13 Nov 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Bangor University
Supervisor	Lucy Piggin (Supervisor), Katie Bigham (Supervisor), Christopher Patterson (Supervisor) & Dr Paul Gardner (Supervisor)