Health Risks in Disaster Responders: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Introduction:Disasters cause severe disruption to socio-economic, infrastructural, and environmental aspects of community and nation. While the impact of disasters is strongly felt by those directly affected, they also have significant impacts on the mental and physical health of relief/recovery workers and volunteers. Variations in the nature and scale of disasters necessitate different approaches to risk management and hazard reduction during the response and recovery phases.Method:Published articles (2010-2017) on the quantitative and quantitative relationship between disasters and the physical and mental health of relief/recovery workers and volunteers were systematically collected and reviewed. A total of 162 relevant studies were identified. Physical injuries and mental health impacts were categorized into immediate, short-term, and chronic conditions. A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to explore the health risks and injuries encountered by disaster relief workers and volunteers, and to identify the factors contributing to these and relating mitigation strategies.Results:There were relatively few studies into this issue. However, the majority of the scrutinized articles highlighted the dependence of nature and scope of injuries with the disaster type and the types of responders, while the living and working environment and socio-economic standing also had significant influence on health outcomes.Conclusion:A conceptual framework derived from the literature review clearly illustrated several critical elements that directly or indirectly cause damage to physical and mental health of disaster responders. Pre-disaster and post-disaster risk mitigation approaches may be employed to reduce the vulnerability of both volunteers and workers while understanding the identified stressors and their relationships.Khatri KC J, Fitzgerald G, Poudyal Chhetri MB. Health risks in disaster responders: a conceptual framework. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2019;34(2):209–216

Dealing with difficult choices: a qualitative study of experiences and consequences of moral challenges among disaster healthcare responders

“…Unresolved moral challenges are reported to lead to negative consequences for the wellbeing of responders such as burnout and depression, and these moral stressors are in addition to other common stress factors [ 17 ]. This was highlighted after the Ebola outbreak in 2014–2015, when more cost-effective preventive public health measures were prioritized over individual clinical care in order to maximize efforts to stop the epidemic.…”

Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Work-Related Stress among Rescue Workers in Traumatic Mass-Casualty Disasters

“…The purpose was to confirm a common factor pattern and to determine whether the scale structure in fact corresponds to the four themes identified from the interviews. The determination of which items were to be retained for the final scale was based on their model fit with the factor pattern [27] and conformance to the guiding theoretical definitions of the work-related stress dimensions [2].…”

“…Traumatic disasters with mass casualties incur major human and healthcare costs in countries such as Taiwan that provide many opportunities for such events to occur [1]. The effects of these catastrophes are experienced not only by the victims at the disaster site; they also create a high risk of long-term negative psychological consequences in the rescue workers [2][3][4]. Rescue workers, especially firefighters, are first responders who provide immediate support to victims at a disaster site.…”

Veterinary behavioural health issues associated with disaster response

“…These studies highlight the background behavioural status of veterinarians. Khatri, Fitzgerald and Meen (2019) provided a systematic review of published articles on health risks for disaster responders that showing mental health as a key issue. Forty-five of the 71 identified articles cited in the review included veterinarians as responders, however, there is a general lack of detailed information on veterinary responder behavioural health.…”