Chest · 23 authors, 20 centres
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A consensus-based guideline development process was used to create operational strategies for supporting healthcare worker mental health, burnout, and moral distress during pandemics and disasters. The central result is the synthesis of evidence and expert opinion into 14 major suggestions organized into three categories for implementation.
This guideline was developed by the Workforce Sustainment subcommittee of the Task Force for Mass Critical Care using a modified Delphi process with a five-point Likert scale for voting. The process synthesized evidence from a literature review of 152 statements and 45 anecdotal statements based on expert clinical experience. The overall quality of evidence was noted as low due to the primarily observational nature of included articles. The committee consolidated this evidence into 14 major suggestions organized into categories covering mental health and well-being, system-level support and leadership, and research priorities. The implications are that these evidence-informed operational strategies can assist healthcare workers and hospitals in planning to prevent and treat factors affecting mental health, burnout, and moral distress, thereby improving workforce resilience and retention following the COVID-19 pandemic. A key limitation is the low overall quality of the underlying evidence.
