Health Workers' Anxiety Experience Against Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever During Rainy Season: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF) is still a health problem and a serious threat in some areas of Indonesia. This disease not only has an impact on the health sector, the social sector, and the community's economy, but also anxiety for health workers during the rainy season. The objective is to find out the anxiety experienced by health workers regarding DHF during the rainy season, the causal factors, and how to anticipate them. The method was phenomenological approach with descriptive analysis. The stages include bracketing, intuitive, analyzing, and describing. The research was conducted during the rainy season in December 2022. Five informants were randomly selected to represent the regions of Aceh, West Java, East Java, Flores, South Maluku, and Papua. Primary data were obtained from semistructured interviews with four. Secondary data were obtained from official documents and reputable journals for the last five years. The data were processed using phenomenology (bracketing, intuitive, analyzing, and describing) and analyzed it descriptively. Results show healthcare workers experience anxiety that can potentially arise due to changing seasons during the rainy season (18.75%), the dynamics of government regulations against DHF (31.25%), increased workload especially during the Covid-19 pandemic (31.25%), and the location of the place work (18.75%). Program enrichment in the form of debriefing training in dealing with DHF for healthcare workers in case-prone places needs to emphasize helping psychological and mental readiness so that it can reduce the level of anxiety when there is a change in weather which is followed by an increase in the incidence rate of DHF Keyword: Anxiety DHF healthcare workers This open-access article is under the CC-BY-SA license.