Gearing back to normal clinical services in Wuhan: frontline experiences and recommendations from mental health perspective.

Editor

With the improving situation of COVID‐19 pandemic in many countries or regions, suspended elective surgery slowly resume normalcy in medical systems, which means that backlog needs be caught up by surgical healthcare workers . Rapidly increases the number of operations in a short period, so does the mental burdens on doctors and patients. Here, we share our experiences in dealing with mental burdens of patients and medical staff in the department of general surgery of Wuhan Union hospital, China.

For patients, the post‐epidemic mental stress should not be ignored, which might come from the following aspects: (1) patients infected with COVID‐19 during pandemic are often worried about being discriminated against because of general population's insufficient scientific understanding of COVID‐19; (2) the waiting lists of elective surgery for outpatients have drastically lengthened in general surgery departments due to accumulation of suspended elective surgery during COVID‐19 pandemic, causing significantly delayed admission; (3) COVID‐19 related examinations (chest CT examination + viral nucleic acid testing + serum viral antibody testing) required prior to admission should be received to eliminate the possibility of asymptomatic infections in outpatients, often needing additional time of 2‐3 days . Facing these problems, what we have done to help patients maintain mental well‐being are: (1) providing mental health counseling for recovered COVID‐19 patients; (2) setting up internet and social media (such as Wechat and/ or Weibo) to strengthen publicity and dissemination of scientific knowledge regarding COVID‐19; (3) organizing psychologists to offer mental health lectures for relevant communities and assist distribution of COVID‐19 prevention guidelines.

A considerable number of surgical medical workers involved in the previous fight against COVID‐19 are experiencing psychological burdens , , which might result from overwhelming workload suddenly emerged for surgeons many of whom just returned from the frontline acting as physicians treating COVID‐19 patients, and uncertainty and fear of a second surge of outbreak and worrying about their own and family members' health . To care for our medical staff, we have (1) invited psychologist and psychiatrists to share useful strategies with our colleagues through online mental health seminars or offline talking cure; (2) provided medical examinations on a regular basis including SARS‐Cov‐2 nucleic acid testing and serum antibodies examination; (3) split medical staff into several teams rotating through different working units, ensuring adequate rest time and preventing potential cross infection.

Maintaining mental health of patients and medical workers is an important task in the current critical situation, which would facilitate the effective and rapid recovery of suspended medical systems.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.