Reflections of COVID-19 Health Care Workers: a qualitative study

The COVID-19 outbreak has been an unprecedented event which has taken the humanity as a whole and health care services in particular by storm. It has been a challenging time for health care workers who have been caring for patients in the COVID-19 isolation hospitals. Little attention has been given to evaluating the impact of working in pandemic on health care workers’ (HCW) own perspectives in Indian context**.**

This study is needed to uncover what has been the impact of working in pandemic on health care workers’ perspectives and support needs in various sub-themes such as Physical health, safety and security,Concerns for self,Concerns for others,Practical and environmental issues, Workload etc. Methodology: HCW [Residents / Consultants] who are willing and consenting to participate in the study would be called for a Focus-group discussion. Invitation for participation would be sent by Nodal Officer, COVID hospital (PI). Minimum size for the focus-group would be 8 and maximum not more than 12. We would try to keep equal or almost equal gender distribution. The focus group would be conducted by team members AP and JG. They are suitable for this as both have neither been involved in COVID duty. Session would be audio recorded and transcribed for further analysis.

Ethical issues: Confidentiality will be maintained by undertaking following steps:

1. The transcription would be done by the study team members. The transcriptions would not use individual identity of the study participants. Codes would be assigned to the participants in transcriptions e.g. P1, P2 etc.

2. The analysis would be based on the transcribed content. It would be done by team members (BSV and JV) who will be blind to the identity of the participants.

3. Audio recording would only be in possessions of the AP and JG. And will be kept under password protected folder.