RAWALPINDI: Over 41 percent of Pakistani health care workers have faced some form of verbal and physical violence while battling the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study by the APPNA Institute of Public Health (APIH) at Jinnah Sindh Medical University, Karachi, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), University of Lahore and Khyber Medical University has showed.
The research project, whose findings were released on Wednesday, today, interviewed 356 health care workers employed at hospitals, testing centers, and COVID isolation wards and camps in Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi. Healthcare workers in the study included doctors, nurses, physicians’ assistants, lab technicians, and emergency workers such as ambulance drivers and response teams.
“There is an erosion of trust between patients and health care workers in Pakistan,” Dr. Mirwais Khan, who heads the Health Care in Danger (HCiD) initiative of the ICRC, told Arab News in a phone interview. “We needed to see if COVID-19 was making it worse.”
The study, conducted in May and June of 2020 during the peak of the first wave of the coronavirus in Pakistan, showed that 41.9% participants experienced violence during their COVID-19 response, with six percent reporting physical assault. The study defined acts of violence to include verbal and physical assault, as well as stigma and ostracization from patients and their families.
A third of those interviewed reported being falsely accused of causing injury or death to patients.
Dr. Irfan Khan, a health care worker at a COVID-19 isolation ward in Peshawar, told Arab News he had to deal with multiple acts of verbal aggression.
“On three separate occasions, a patients’ attendants began screaming obscenities at us,” Khan said. “It was a verbal fight but hospital security had to intervene.”
Dr. Roomana, who only wanted to be identified by her first name, is a medical registrar at a hospital in Karachi and said it was “demoralizing” to face a “barrage of insults” while on duty.
Among the recommendations of the study to change attitudes about health workers are tackling misinformation on social media, creating stronger support for health care staff at work when dealing with psychological stress, training them on better communication with patients and their attendants, and de-escalating violence.
“We want the findings to impact policies and laws, and are already using it to help in drafting bills as well as putting together workshops and training,” ICRC’s Khan said, saying the organization was in talks with provincial governments to address concerns.