Managing stress and preventing burnout in healthcare professionals during the Covid-19 emergency

Research goals and background: Protecting the mental health of health workers during the Covid-19 emergency was a relevant topic due to the negative effects on psychophysical health, the increasing stress, and the potential occurrence of burnout (Greenberget al., 2020; Jianbo et al., 2020). Healthcare professionals are among the workers at greatest risk of exposure to the virus and their commitment at the forefront of the health emergency exposes them to a growing operational and emotional overload (Kinman et al., 2020; Theorell, 2020). In reflection of this, the Italian Workers Compensations Authority (INAIL), in collaboration with the Italian Council of the Order of Psychologists, promoted an initiative aimed at providing psychological support to health professionals through the dissemination of procedural guidelines and useful tools intended for psychological aid in hospitals. Methods: After the guidelines, several task forces of psychologists started counselling and psychological support services targeted healthcare professionals, with the aim of understanding their needs and responding to possible psychological problems that may arise in healthcare workers during the Covid-19 emergency. INAIL also created a network with 15 units of psychologists from hospitals located throughout Italy for monitoring such psychological support activities. Monitoring was made possible by the collection of an anonymized psychological triage checklist developed by INAIL that allowed collecting standardised information on psychological support activities provided by the national health service. Data from each unit were aggregated and analysed by Inail. Results: The network of 15 units involved 229 professional psychologists working in the hospitals. The network provided 808 checklists of psychological triage to INAIL, including information from about 2,000 psychological sessions (average = 3.5 sessions per healthcare worker asking for help). Data monitoring refers to the period from February to September 2020. Most of health care professionals asking for help from the services were female (74%), nurses (49,4%), or doctors (20,4%). Among the others, the most frequent reactions to the event found were depressive symptoms (59%) and psychosomatic disorders (44%). Findings about impacts and interventions will be discussed. Conclusions: During the emergency, it was required to provide immediate interventions of individual psychological support to equip health care professionals with tools and strategies for coping, adaptation, and recovery. The development, at a later stage, of a second level monitoring was useful to analyse how the procedure at the local level has been implemented and the impacts on mental health in the hospital setting. Findings offer information also to optimize the tools and resources provided with the aim of promoting a procedure with high quality standards.