Early psychological interventions for frontline responders in disaster settings (research up to July 2020)
Citation: Hooper JJ, Saulsman L, Hall T, et al. Addressing the psychological impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers: learning from a systematic review of early interventions for frontline responders. BMJ Open. 2021;11(5):e044134.
Language: Abstract and full text only available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: RTP scholarship from the University of Western Australia.
What is this? The COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies and disasters places a strain on the physical and mental health of healthcare workers and frontline responders. Effective interventions to alleviate this would help improve the resilience of health systems.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of early psychological interventions (within 3 months of a traumatic event) for frontline responders in disaster settings. They restricted their searches to articles published in English within the last 15 years and did the search in July 2020. They included 4 cross-sectional studies, 3 individually randomised trials, 2 cluster randomised trials and 3 quasi-experimental studies.
What was found: Psychological first aid, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, and trauma risk management were effective for frontline responders, in at least two included studies.
The effects of Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) for frontline responders are uncertain.
Implications: The authors of this review concluded that service providers should implement and evaluate early psychological interventions in frontline workers in order to refine best practices for managing the psychological impact of disasters.
Other considerations: The authors of the review did not discuss their findings in the context of issues relating to health equity.
This summary was prepared by Stephanie Sampson and edited and finalized by Mike Clarke.