A Qualitative Investigation of the Impact of COVID-19 on United States’ Frontline Health Care Workers and the Perceived Impact on Their Family Members

Abstract

Although previous research has documented the mental and physical health impacts that COVID-19 had on frontline health workers in the United States, little is known about how the pandemic affected their families. This study sought to explore the impact COVID-19 had on the individual functioning of frontline health care workers in the USA and the perceived impact it had on their family members during the initial nine months of the pandemic. More specifically, this study sought to explore if and how family roles, routines, rules, and social-emotional well-being changed as a result of COVID-19. Twenty-eight frontline health care workers across the United States who were parents to at least one child residing in the home under 24 were interviewed. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. From the analysis, three major themes emerged with regard to the changes and perceived impact to family functioning, family experiences of new hygiene practices, and stigma related to being a health care practitioner or having a family member working in health care. The results of this study can be used by mental health clinicians to inform policy, develop practice guidelines, and help identify and target interventions for health care workers and their family members.

Respected but stigmatized: Healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients

“…The stigma experienced by participants in our study is in line with other studies [1,29,30]. For example, American COVID-19 described being refused entrance at a store or the hairdresser and encountering difficulties in conversations because of others "knowing better" about COVID-19 [31]. Indian COVID-19 HCWs nondisclosed their jobs out of fear of stigmatization and felt guilty of exposing their family members to COVID-19 infection [26].…”

“…We interviewed 32 females and 21 males between the age of 23 and 64 years (on average 31 years). Interviewees from the Philippines were on average 43 years old and thus older compared to the other countries (average ranging from [27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Interviewees worked as nurse assistants (n = 9), nurses (n = 25), or physicians (n = 18) on COVID-19 departments in urban (n = 45) or rural (n = 3) hospitals.…”

Key predictors of psychological distress and wellbeing in Australian frontline healthcare workers during COVID-19 (Omicron wave)

“…These stressors include lockdowns (Westrupp et al, 2021a,b), community infection risks (Fitzpatrick et al, 2020; and relational impacts (Cassinat et al, 2021;Sheen et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2021). Emerging qualitative evidence also support these findings in FHWs, showing that these social stressors have placed significant burden on FHWs during the COVID-19 pandemic (Schaffer et al, 2022;Sheen et al, 2022). These findings, therefore, highlight the need to further our understanding of key predictors of psychological distress and wellbeing amongst FHWs during the COVID-19 pandemic that considers stressors beyond work, such as pandemic and social stressors.…”

Symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and their relationship with the fear of COVID−19 and COVID−19 burden among health care workers after the full liberalization of COVID−19 prevention and control policy in China: a cross-sectional study

“…Lee et al [ 70 ] found that greater stress on family and social relationships was a risk factor for psychological distress. The Covid-19 pandemic and infectious disease control measures such as lockdowns have caused psychological distress for health care workers and their families [ 71 ] and also have had a severe impact on the family lives of the subjects [ 72 ].…”