Juan Moisés De La Serna - A Psychological Perspective Of The Health Personnel In Times Of Pandemic

With respect to open policies, the results indicate the advantages of reducing stress and increasing patient safety; helps the family with the patient’s primary care; provides education to patients and families; a better environment is created in the doctor-patient relationship; and in disadvantages the violation of the privacy of the patient and interference with the treatment

As the authors point out, new research is required before any conclusions can be drawn in this regard, mainly due to the small number of study participants and the qualitative methodology used. Despite this, it should be noted that restrictive policies guarantee the doctor’s visit once a day; something that is perceived as insufficient for both patients and families. Likewise, the Healthcare Personnel feels more comfortable with open policies, since without losing professionalism they can offer more personalized and quality patient caring.

Despite the advantages of one system or the other, it must be taken into account that the application of these results to a health center will depend a lot on its size, thus open policies seem more suitable for a health center of size medium or small; where staff can have “quality time” with their patients, without the need to adhere to a strict schedule, while in larger centres, where the number of patients per doctor is high, the best system would be that of restrictive policies, where a minimum of care is guaranteed to all patients.

Despite this, the demand from both patients and their families that Healthcare Personnel should not lose the “warmth” of human relationships during their visits, whether restrictive or open, has to be highlighted.

That is to say, and regaining the idea of this section, what has been presented is the data regarding the human resources of Health Personnel, doctors and nurses, as well as the material resources considered these as the number of beds available, not attending to other characteristics in terms of quality of the caring or how modern the technological equipment is.

To know these aspects, Health Consumer Powerhouse Ltd must be consulted which publishes the Euro Health Consumer Index annually, where 46 indicators are taken into account, including areas such as the patient´s rights or the information received, establishing from this a ranking of health systems in Europe, with Switzerland, the Netherlands and Norway having the best scores in 2018; and the worst Albania, Romania and Hungary (Health Consumer Powerhouse Ltd, 2018) (see Figure 4).

Illustration 4 European Health System Ranking

Even with all the data presented, it is not possible to establish a priori which country will better withstand a health crisis, since in these circumstances the available resources in terms of personnel and number of beds may have a greater relevance, compared with the results regarding satisfaction with the rights of the patient or information that he receives.

In addition, and alongside with the above, it must be taken into account that governments are implementing a series of measures that make the number of patients attended wherever they reach health services staggered or not, so that a “controlled” progress of a disease can be adequately cared of, by a health system with “adjusted” resources, while a “peak” of contagion and therefore of patients requiring hospitalization can cause the collapse of any health system, no matter how prepared it is.

About COVID-19

Although it is a new virus, a lot is already known about COVID-19, starting with the family it belongs and the characteristics of this Coronavirus (@CSIC, 2020) (see Illustration 5)

Information has been discovered thanks to the involvement of numerous research laboratories and universities around the world, and having in addition for the first time the genetic sequence of the virus released by China as a way to stimulate the search for a cure.

These two factors have allowed that different tests are currently being carried out throughout the world, trying to know how to combat its advance and especially to reduce the death rate.

From the O.M.S. answers are offered about what COVID-19 is, what its symptoms are, how it spreads, or what is the recovery and death rate among those infected, and others (O.M.S., 2020b).

But despite this, various aspects are still being investigated today for which there is still no answer, especially in relation to an effective treatment, both preventive and to reduce the consequences of the disease.

Illustration 5. Tweet Image of COVID.19

The name of COVID-19

One of the problems of social psychologists is to achieve customer loyalty to a brand, this being the one we use to identify a certain person, product or company.

Normally when we think of a company like Coca-Cola, McDonald or Ikea, we usually do it with respect to the products they sell. If we look at other brands such as U.P.S., Iberia or Microsoft, we do it on the services they offer.

Something that will decisively influence the acquisition of the product or service in question, not only based on our own criteria, but also on the influence of the opinion of others and the media through advertising.

Likewise, when we think of Stephen Hawking, Barack Obama or Rafael Nadal, we no longer do so in products or services, if not because of their Personal Branding or personal brand that they have developed thanks to their scientific, political or sports careers respectively, that is, emotional aspects are associated with the brand, which can be linked to a person, company and even location.

Well, the same happens when “misfortunes” are to be called, as happens when designating tropical cyclones that annually hit a large part of the Caribbean and North America.

As reported by the World Meteorological Organization (World Meteorological Organization, 2020), these names follow pre-established lists that rotate, leaving in many the memory of the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or Ike in 2008.

Therefore, in principle, these names are not related to the date on which it occurs, the violence or the areas most affected, among these there are English or Spanish (for example, Barry or Gonzalo respectively), male or female (for example , Lorenzo or Laura respectively), but does the name of tropical cyclones have an impact on the population?

This is what has been trying to find with an investigation carried out by the Department of Administration and Companies; in conjunction with the Department of Psychology, the Communications Research Institute, and the Women and Gender Surveys Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois; together with the Department of Statistics of the Arizona State University (USA) (Jung, Shavitt, Viswanathan, & Hilbe, 2014).

The study analysed the climatic consequences of hurricanes in the United States during the last six decades, differentiating them based on masculine and feminine names, first finding that those with feminine names had been the ones that had led to the greatest destructive effects and deaths.

It must be remembered that the list of names is predetermined and that their assignment is consecutive, so a priori there is no relationship between the gender of the name and its violence, so the most surprising thing about the study is that they passed a list of names of hurricanes, 5 male and 5 female to 346 participants, so that they assessed through a Likert-type scale from 1 to 7 to what extent each of the hurricanes on the list was considered violent.