Knowledge, Confidence, and Perception of Respiratory Therapists as Frontliners in Managing COVID-19 Cases – A Questionnaire Survey

Characterizing the mental health and functioning of Canadian respiratory therapists during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…RTs are HCPs who specialize in the cardiopulmonary system and are key team members in end-of-life care (Mahan, 2019 ). As experts in mechanical ventilation, RTs have played a vital role on the frontlines caring for COVID-19 patients (Rajan et al, 2021 ; Sawadkar & Nayak, 2020 ). With pre-pandemic evidence suggesting that moral distress, death anxiety and PTSD may be relevant concerns among RTs given high exposure to death and dying in their occupation (Brown-Saltzman et al, 2010 ; Burr et al, 2020 ; Collins et al, 2015 ; Mahan, 2019 ), there is reason to suspect that RTs, like their colleagues, may be negatively impacted by added stressors and exposures during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…For example, Miller et al ( 2021b ) found high levels of burnout among their sample of 3010 RTs. Rajan et al ( 2021 ) found that RTs reported a ‘negative psychological impact’ related to working on the frontlines of the pandemic, with a high level of concern over bringing COVID-19 home to family as a specific factor related to this impact (Rajan et al, 2021 ). Notably, there are limitations to these RT-specific studies as author-generated questionnaires were used rather than psychometrically validated measures of burnout or negative psychological impacts.…”