Emergencies follow one another and are not alike. Specialists in the field—emergency physicians—can help us deal with impending dangers, though they are, to their own regret, “badly shod shoemakers.”
“When we think of the pandemic, when we think of war, in our daily lives, we experience stress. You have to learn to control what you can control, advises Dr. Patrick Archambault, emergency medicine specialist at Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis. It means eating well, sleeping well. Try to live active lives, where you expend energy healthily. You have to stay active. And protect yourself: you have to learn to be able to speak, to not keep emotions inside. You have to be able to talk about it with someone close. Often we are not alone in our circles. You have to learn to say no. And you have to go get help when you need it. »
“It’s easy to say,” laments the expert with regret. He has just co-authored a publication that establishes the proportion of emergency physicians who showed signs of burnout at 60%.
“Unfortunately, this is another case of badly shod shoemakers. There is a certain attitude in the environment, a posture of invincibility, which means that asking for help does not come spontaneously,” he explains.
Isolation, masks and distances of all kinds for two years have weighed heavily on these specialists with nerves of steel. ” [Avec des combinaisons sanitaires], it is less easy to express empathy. With masks, we are less able to read the expressions on patients’ faces. The whole human side of medicine is reduced. »
Moreover, the demands have reached perilous heights. “At several points during the pandemic, we came very close to the breakout, with triage simulations, where you have to simulate and make life or death decisions… fortunately, it never came to that. »
“I don’t believe that the 60% are very different for other health professionals,” emphasizes Dr. Archambault.
This study was carried out during the second wave, in the fall of 2020. Everything indicates that this number of professionally exhausted healthcare workers must be higher today, according to his “impression”.
The Quebec Physicians Assistance Program is a great option for getting support as a healthcare professional.
This text is taken from our newsletter “Coronavirus mail” of February 28, 2022. To subscribe, click here.